from Hacker News

Google Maps Will Rename Gulf of Mexico as Gulf of America in US

by hackernj on 1/28/25, 2:20 PM with 30 comments

  • by osigurdson on 1/28/25, 3:02 PM

    I don't like the (global) trend of renaming things every time governments change. It is lazy tokenism in my opinion.

  • by RegnisGnaw on 1/28/25, 3:17 PM

    Google does this for a lot of places, for example Kashmir. In India the law mandates that any non-historical map must show all of Kashmir as part of India. Similar law for Pakistan. So Google Maps shows Kashmir as part of India if you are in India and Pakistan if you are in Pakistan.

  • by bpodgursky on 1/28/25, 3:11 PM

    The Google policy of using official government policy for naming places is reasonable exactly so they don't have to fight an internal civil war over every (dumb) move like this.

  • by polotics on 1/28/25, 3:20 PM

    Eagerly awaiting the moment this gets renamed to "Gulf between promises on inflation and reality". Maybe plan it as an April's fools joke from the Gmaps' crew? ;-D

  • by drawkward on 1/28/25, 2:35 PM

    Quislings.

  • by crtasm on 1/28/25, 3:22 PM

    Google Maps in the US Will Change to Gulf of America and Mount McKinley (theverge.com) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42849935 43 points | 7 hours ago | 64 comments

  • by jedbrooke on 1/28/25, 3:12 PM

    I don’t see why people are so upset about this. Mexico is in the continent of North America. if they were trying to rename it to “Gulf of the United States” or something then that would be less reasonable.

  • by estebarb on 1/28/25, 3:08 PM

    So, we will see "America Mexicana" in Google Maps?

  • by ChrisArchitect on 1/28/25, 3:30 PM

  • by baggy_trough on 1/28/25, 3:16 PM

    This is pretty annoying - almost as bad as trying to rename Turkey to whatever non-ASCII atrocity they came up with.

  • by cxr on 1/28/25, 3:19 PM

    This is a great example of how right people are to have a low opinion of news organizations over the rage- and clickbait that even ostensibly respectable ones are willing to traffic in for engagement. The entire basis for this article seems to be these four statements that Google posted on Twitter:

    > We’ve received a few questions about naming within Google Maps. We have a longstanding practice of applying name changes when they have been updated in official government sources.

    > For geographic features in the U.S., this is when Geographic Names Information System (GNIS) is updated. <https://www.usgs.gov/tools/geographic-names-information-syst...>

    > When that happens, we will update Google Maps in the U.S. quickly to show Mount McKinley and Gulf of America.

    > Also longstanding practice: When official names vary between countries, Maps users see their official local name. Everyone in the rest of the world sees both names. That applies here too.

    <https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1884012692048166951.html>

    (Side note: you know how I know this? Not because the esteemed folks behind this piece linked to their sources, as would be reasonable, given the affordances of the medium. I had to take the fragments mentioned in the article and track it down myself.)

    Please:

    1. Flag this article

    2. Stop rewarding the professional writers, editors, and news organizations and other shameless sacks of shit who turn out/receive outrage pieces like this and say, "Yeah, we're fine with this"

    3. Stop submitting this kind of dogshit here

  • by kjsingh on 1/28/25, 8:35 PM

    Who is the designated naming authority

  • by yladiz on 1/28/25, 3:11 PM

    Waiting for someone to pull an Astana[1] and a rename of Washington to Trump.

    1: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Astana#Names

  • by bbqfog on 1/28/25, 3:16 PM

    Freedom fries for maps. Very idiotic.