Mexican President urges Google to reconsider renaming the Gulf of Mexico to 'Gulf of America' on its maps feature at Trump's demand, and threatens legal action.
The president of Mexico on Thursday expressed hope that Google "reconsiders" its decision to change its online maps to reflect U.S. President Donald Trump's claim that he has the authority to change the name of the Gulf of Mexico.
Shortly after taking office, Trump issued an executive order announcing he was changing the name of the body of water to the Gulf of America.
For U.S. users of Google Maps, the gulf was listed as the Gulf of America as of Thursday. Google, whose CEO attended Trump's inauguration along with other tech moguls, said last month it has "a long-standing practice of applying name changes when they have been updated in official government sources."
But Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum warned Thursday that her government "will file a civil suit" against Google if it does not revert back to labeling the international body of water the Gulf of Mexico.
Don't know, but countries do provide a check/balance. Look at how Brazil twisted twitters arm and forced change. If our govt won't, glad another one stepped up to the challenge.
The government doesn't control the language, it doesn't control the encyclopedia. Behaving like it does (in either direction) is a surprisingly dangerous activity to normalize.
Who does, then? Google? Can they just change all the names to whatever they want? They're big enough that I bet most of them would slowly catch on and become vernacular
It is not about controlling a language, but barring the attempts of someone else (Google Inc.) to control how multiple languages refer to international waters.