this post was submitted on 13 Feb 2025
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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.

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[–] [email protected] 5 points 6 days ago

Golf of Portugal While we are at renaming things...

[–] [email protected] 224 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (8 children)

Why bother with this? If you want to make a point, pass regulation in Mexico to call E.E.U.U. (US in Mexico) be called Northern Mexico. Then Google is forced to comply on that territory like they claim they do for disputed sections when maps are viewed from that region. It would make for some funny reactions from people visiting Cancun or Puerto Vallarta.

Edit: plus it would show how stupid the whole rename thing is to begin with.

[–] [email protected] 184 points 1 week ago (8 children)

TIL…

The abbreviation E.E.U.U. (often written as EE. UU.) stands for Estados Unidos (United States) in Spanish. This abbreviation follows a grammatical rule in Spanish where doubling the initial letters of each word indicates plurality

So you taught me something today I did not know. Thank you!!

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[–] [email protected] 122 points 1 week ago (2 children)

Don’t “threaten”. Any asshole can make a threat. GO AHEAD AND DO IT.

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[–] [email protected] 86 points 1 week ago (7 children)

Everyone needs to get used to ignoring this bullshit. The Gulf of America thing isn't important. It doesn't effect anyone, and there's far too many posts about it when there are real things to pay attention to. This is purely a distraction. Stop giving it attention.

[–] [email protected] 61 points 1 week ago

There is one part thats relevant, and thats the government suing AsPo for refusing to comply. Thats a direct attack on the First Amendment

[–] [email protected] 34 points 1 week ago

It's the details that make up the whole picture.

As an isolated situation, the renaming thing may be stupid and not worth giving any credence. Energy can be spent resisting elsewhere in more useful places. However along with the rest of the actions of billionare corpos that kissed the ring, it's part of the overall trend with devastating consequences. Bullshit details shouldn't be ignored, but acknowledged as "they're fucking us from all directions right now and waging war on reality, and we really should stop letting them".

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[–] [email protected] 60 points 1 week ago (8 children)

Where will the lawsuit be filed in?

Mexican courts? Good luck getting an American company to comply.

US Courts, well... surely no judge would be biased right? glances at the composition of the US Supreme court

International Courts? Lol like they have any power at all.

Reminds me of The Expanse:

"Earth Court? Mars Court? What Inner court gives Belters justice?"

[–] [email protected] 42 points 1 week ago (6 children)

Mexican courts? Good luck getting an American company to comply.

Why not? Brazilian courts ordered Twitter to ban some people, Twitter refused, court treated to jail Brazilian Twitter legal representatives, Twitter closed their Brazilian office to shield itself from Brazilian courts, Brazilian courts ordered ISPs to block Twitter because they had no legal representatives on the country, after a couple of weeks without Brazilian access Twitter bow down, rehired their legal representatives and complied with Brazilian court orders.

Don't see why Mexican courts couldn't do the same with Google Maps.

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[–] [email protected] 59 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (25 children)

I can see Google (and Apple) quietly paying a fine and changing it for Mexico (and any other jurisdiction that specifically asks).

This is stupid and cowardly of them, but that aside, the implication is 100% “comply, or the US government will make life difficult for Google.” I can see how they’re stuck between a rock and a hard place.

[–] [email protected] 72 points 1 week ago

Nah, they’re willing collaborators.

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[–] [email protected] 54 points 1 week ago (21 children)

Less threatening... More doing.

The U.S. dictatorship are just doing and they're slowly tearing apart OUR planet.

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[–] [email protected] 52 points 1 week ago (2 children)

Again, this is one of the dumbest fucking wastes of money I've ever seen. Waste of labor from the top down. Waste of resources. This is purely a pride move. It's the gulf of Mexico and always has been. There are American songs about the gulf of Mexico. It's history. I have said it before and I'll say it again, I fucking hate this timeline. This shit is wild. This stuff now days is a mockery of our world.

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[–] [email protected] 45 points 1 week ago (2 children)

Cancel all government contracts with google

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[–] [email protected] 39 points 1 week ago (3 children)

Restrict Google from doing business.in the country altogether.

Have phones switch to some open non Google platform

Fuck google, microsoft, apple, they're all evil at this point

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[–] [email protected] 38 points 1 week ago (3 children)

Whenever I see Gulf of America mentioned, in my head it sounds like "This is America" in the Childish Gambino song.

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[–] [email protected] 38 points 1 week ago (15 children)

Ive been already boycotting google, amazon, facebook, reddit. Yall need to get on it

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[–] [email protected] 35 points 1 week ago (4 children)

I want to know how many of the people here defending Google's decision would be okay with Google labeling Taiwan as "Taiwan (Chinese Taipei)" for people in Taiwan and also the rest of the world.

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[–] [email protected] 32 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Do it honey. Make em pay for suckin orange ass

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[–] [email protected] 29 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (2 children)

What's dumb about this is that in their jurisdiction (Mexico) it is actually the "Gulf of Mexico" in Google Maps, they don't get the "Gulf of America" name. In the US it's labelled as "Gulf of America" without mentioning "Gulf of Mexico" which you could argue Google has to do because it (theoretically) follows national laws everywhere it operates.

That's why Korean users don't see the Sea of Japan to their east, they see the East Sea. That's why in some locations the Persian Gulf is referred to as the Arabian Gulf instead. It's also why inside India the borders you see for Kashmir don't match the borders you see for Kashmir if you're in Pakistan. The rest of the world sees a third version of that area with areas marked as disputed.

What's really annoying is that every other country in the world is exposed to this "Gulf of America" silliness, even countries where people don't speak English. I can understand (just barely) having "(Gulf of America)" under "Gulf of Mexico" in English-speaking countries because if someone is hearing news from a US source and they refer to the Gulf of America, it might be useful to know what they're talking about. It's in the news now, but in 3 years say you're a high-school kid trying to do a geography report and can't find the feature on the map, that could be annoying.

But, this parenthesis rule apparently even extends to Germany, where it's "Golf von Mexiko (Golf von Amerika)". There's no reason to include a name that doesn't exist in your language on your version of the maps app. If I, as an English-maps user look at Germany, I don't get Munich (Munchen). I don't get Florence (Firenze), I don't get India (Bhārat). There's a long-standing tradition that maps show things in the name that's local to the map user. Sometimes, over time, a name gets changed to be closer to the way it's said in the local language, so Peking became Beijing.

Also, google addressed this in a blog post from 2008, almost literally describing this situation:

"How Google determines the names for bodies of water in Google Earth ... 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"

Other than the ruler not being female, the body of water being a different one, and "America" not being Donald Trump's mother, this is the exact situation.

Edit: I guess technically Donald Trump is female.

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