Google has had to deal with disputed place names a number of times.

There’s the Sea of Japan which has the parenthesized name “East Sea”, which I think is only used in Korea.

There’s the Persian Gulf sometimes known as the Arabian gulf.

There’s the Falkland Islands which the Argentinians refer to as Islas Malvinas.

What’s really dumb about this is that it goes directly against the old policy (from 2008) where they said:

When our policy says that we display the “primary, common, local” names for a body of water, each of those three adjectives has an important and distinct meaning. By saying “primary”, we aim to include names of dominant use, rather than having to add every conceivable local nickname or variation. By saying “common”, we mean to include names which are in widespread daily use, rather than giving immediate recognition to any arbitrary governmental re-naming. In other words, if a ruler announced that henceforth the Pacific Ocean would be named after her mother, we would not add that placemark unless and until the name came into common usage.

But, the Gulf of “America” is not in common usage anywhere. Canada should see only “Gulf of Mexico”, even though it shares a language with the country that officially renamed it to “Gulf of America”. And in particular Germany shouldn’t see anything about “Amerika” because that’s just not a thing in any German-speaking country.

Really, it should be Gulf of America (Gulf of Mexico) in the US and whatever the local name is everywhere else.

I was crucified when I compared the two on an authoritarian leftist instance I shall not name, but I think people here can agree that despite having very different colours and propaganda, they both are both converging with the facist side of the spectrum.

They’ve disabled posting too:

I was very happy to open up organic maps and see it still listed as Mexico.

I’m still trying to get out of Google maps.

OSM ftw

China world love to come in and fill this gap. But who will keep the shipping lanes free of piracy? They have the world’s largest navy.

I was just about to report it as well, and they disabled that ability apparently…

Google has removed the button to report a location as incorrectly labeled from the Gulf of America.

Some users claim they’ve left reviews objecting to the renaming, but a quick scan of the Gulf of Mexico — now labeled Gulf of America depending on your location — reveals that the most recent review is from a month ago.

(source)

Rolling out world wide. I moved to organic maps.

I started last week. Been contemplating doing it for a while and this whole disgusting series of events pushed me over the edge.

Cancelled every paying google services I had and I’ve been replacing their apps with alternatives slowly but surely.

For now it looks like this on my phone

• Tidal replaces youtube music
• Tom Tom replaced Waze unless I find something better
• Back to using firefox instead of chrome with google / Facebook tracking blocking extensions and more
• Got a proton mail and in the process of moving everything that matters to it

Only thing I would love that I can’t get right now is an alternative OS for my phone that I don’t have to tinker a lot with, I know rhey exist but everything I read on the subject basically says: don’t bother. Setting up Endeavour OS on my laptop is already a lot of work for a 42 year old Linux noob like me, even though it’s far from the most complicated distro from what I understand…

I also set another launcher on my smart tv, deactivated all the google accounts that I could and I’m in the process of setting up a plex server on my laptop which I’ll fill with loot from the High Seas. It’s really stupid of them because I was fine paying for the convenience of streaming but now I’m gonna make a point of not doing it and I’ll probably never gonna come back.

Next, I need to figure out how to migrate my website / domain out of google but that’s a next week problem. By the end of the winter, I should be properly google / Microsoft free.

It’s a harsh process I’m not gonna lie but it is very rewarding even though, I don’t lie to myself about the fact that it’s just another drop in the bucket and it’s not gonna change much in the end but at least I live better with myself by doing it.

If you can, add a 1-star review in Play Store for Google Maps while you’re at it. And a comment why.

From Thailand and Singapore it shows as “Gulf of America (Gulf of Mexico)”

They aren’t afraid of negative attention, at least it’s some attention and people will know they have maps too

Unfortunately probably not so easy. Maps is canvas I think, so it’s very hard to “intercept” the name. If Maps were rendered via SVG, and if the Gulf always has the same ID, then it could be possible.