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.
Republicans are so good at baiting liberals into useless bullshit arguments, while they plunder stuff that actually matters.
I don’t think that’s fair in this case, she’s been killing it. She’s been drawing hard lines and meeting Trump blow for blow…
As for what’s important, she got concessions so far. Trump got to claim a win, but she let Trump use a previously negotiated deal while getting the US to commit to cracking down on the flow of guns into Mexico
And now she’s fighting on the bullshit culture war stuff… But you know Mexico speaks a different language and isn’t changing the name on their side, right?
The threats against Google are a threat to crack down on a massive US tech company, which is probably (undoubtedly) related to the threat of delayed tarrifs
She’s playing the game. If only the liberals would wake up and realize the game has changed too
I mean it’s Mexico. I wouldn’t really consider them “liberal”.
Dems and useless virtue-signaling. Name a better duo
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.
Who should care about annoying petty stuff to make a political point? Wether it’s the orange clown trying to rename the Gulf of Mexico to the little unwashed cokehead making a point of calling Kiev Kiyv. I’m surprised Google, that is100% a US regime tool didn’t rename that Chinese province already.
Did you really just call Taiwan a Chinese province?
It IS a Chinese province. Did you really not know that? Nobody recognises Taiwan as an independent state. Not even the hypocrite US meddling warmongers.
Please inform these countries that they do not exist.
https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/countries-that-recognize-taiwan
Google also removed the ability to suggest edits to specifically the Gulf.
Guess they knew ahead of time they’d get an influx of requests to change or back.
They hadn’t removed that ability as of Thursday evening, because I was able to give feed back. My guess is they got a rash of hate messages similar to mine and decided to remove it because of that. I hate them so much right now, but Google is unfortunately the forefront service for my online life. So much I do with Google apps that I really can’t get in any one other place.
Ive been already boycotting google, amazon, facebook, reddit. Yall need to get on it
My phone is a Pixel on Google Fi, and I have a YouTube premium account. I’ve got a lot of work ahead of me :( lol
Yeah its actually insane how far Googles reach has gotten
Nah. I’ll start boycotting google when there are useful alternatives. Amazon, facebook, reddit - no problem.
Google search - fine, I can get by with DDG or Yandex. Gmail - sure, whatever. Maps? Organic Maps (and other openstreetmaps front-ends) works alright for getting your bearings, but it’s a far cry from useful for finding businesses, and terrible for navigation. Waze used to be the only viable alternative, but ever since Google bought them, it’s hard to justify a full boycott without massively inconveniencing myself.
Same for meta as a whole. Facebook and Instagram, sure, no need. But living without whatsapp is simply impossible in some countries, where it’s the de-facto standard for communication, and even used as the only means of contact with government agencies.
If you disapprove of internet companies caving to authoritarian politics, I have bad news for you about Yandex
We did it with Lemmy. It CAN be done!
To an extent. Lemmy is a useful substitute for reddit because it’s anonymous, so I don’t know and to an extent don’t care who I’m talking to. With messenger services it’s a different use case, I need the exact people I want to talk to on there, or it’s essentially worthless.
Its not completely anonymous when the server admins have your IP.
True, I meant anonymous in the sense that participants are not generally identifiable by one another.
Yeah its true unfortunately
Fr, I try, but it’s really not possible to get away from these companies.
Nobody wants signal, nobody wants mastodon, nobody wants or frankly can use openstreetmaps. Alternatives are just not good enough
Alternatives are just not good enough
And to no fault of their own of course. They just aren’t working with the same resources as Google and the others.
I think it’s more a question of stepping down our level of comfort at this point. Can we live without a particular service that Google provides, when there are no alternatives with feature parity? Or can we live with the fact that some of the features aren’t working as well or missing, and use the alternatives anyway?
Exactly. If there were perfectly interchangeable alternatives, there would have been a true competition and those companies wouldn’t be holding the amount of power they do today in the first place.
Moving to alternatives requires some degree of effort and giving up on some microconforts. There’s no other way. There’s no fight without any pain. If we want to fight those companies, we must sacrifice those micro conforts, even if that means reducing tech use as a whole and doing a few things the “old fashioned” way.
Yeah, I still find it impressive how good mastodon and lemmy are given the limitations.
For sure, and that is possible for personal things, but for social things it’s almost impossible to live without some features.
People don’t want to step down their level of comfort when it comes to WhatsApp (where I live people don’t use SMS because they’re limited), so you’re forced to either keep your contacts (which includes family) or move to signal/threema/session/matrix/etc. But have no one to talk to
it really sucks when you realise that virtually everything is a US company… and yet everything they sell is made in fucking China
I prefer the name “golfo del gringo loco”
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.
in their jurisdiction (Mexico) it is actually the “Gulf of Mexico” in Google Maps, they don’t get the “Gulf of America” name.
I’m in Europe and for me it says “Gulf of Mexico (Gulf of America)”. 🥴
I’ve heard that in Germany it’s “Golf von Mexiko (Golf von Amerika)”. That’s really annoying. I can vaguely understand it having the parenthesized name in English. Say in 3 years some kid in England is doing a report about something in the US and the Gulf of America comes up. Maybe you’d want the kid to be able to find it on the map. But, maybe it’s fine if the kid has to look it up somewhere else, realize that’s the stupid name, then search for Gulf of Amerikkka.
But, it doesn’t make any sense to do that for other languages. Just like we don’t get Finland (Suomi) when searching for Finland, Finns shouldn’t get something like Meksikonlahti (Gulf of America). They aren’t going to be exposed to / hearing the Finnish translation of the English name, so it’s not helpful in any way to have that parenthesized version.
Don’t even bother with a pointless lawsuit. Simply stop using Google.
Nah, they’re a megacorp, you gotta hurt them where it counts - in their bottom line. Make them use their super expensive lawyers to defend this shit. Honestly more people/entities should do this. Even pro se, these corporate lawyers cost these companies literally hundreds of thousands of dollars to go into court. Just imagine how much you could cost them if everyone started suing them for any little thing. Even a response to a lawsuit requires a lawyer, which requires time and effort.
Its literally the only thing they care about - money. Strongly worded letters and protests aren’t enough. They can ignore those.
Google is worth more than Mexico. A frivolous lawsuit, which is what this would be, will hurt Mexico more.
have we (the human race) ever been to this point before? where corporations are big enough to absorb whole countries and there’s pretty much nobody who’ll stand up to them?
The East India Company is the first example that comes to mind. I’m sure others.
I really don’t think we are living through unprecedented times, unfortunately. People have sucked for as long as we’ve existed.
While we are at renaming things…
or we keep american shit inside america. fuck googlemaps, apple and all other shitty US corporations. see, tump will die some day and be forgotten, but people will remember what apple and google did. next time you see someone work for alphabet…spit them in the face. next time an american buys a burger, you spit on it. etc. it is not about actual harm as america is killing itself anyway atm. my bingo card says if trump wins twice, there shall also be two pandemics. maybe protest the egg prices a bit more before using that muri-brain to do sth. against it. americans are just stupid.
his name is now tump
Tumpthumbing
Uninstalled 👍
It’s a US company following US policy as it’s a contract holder for the US Government they’re compelled to follow US policy. Whether anyone likes it or not, at least for right now, US policy is that the Gulf of Mexico for all intents and purposes is the Gulf of America.
President Sheinbaum can sue Google all she wants, but there’s no court that’s going to find that a US company complying with US policy is breaking the law.
You could be wrong. While possibly justified on Google’s part, Mexico will most likely sue its Mexican affiliate, and if Google wishes to operate in Mexico, it will have to comply with orders from Mexican courts. See twitter and Brazil for similar case.
That’s fully within the right of Mexico as a country, but that has nothing to do with anything that I’ve said here.
Going forward, the official US policy (because of this executive order) is that it’s the Gulf of America. No amount of suing Google will change that.
Actually the executive order only renames the parts that the US controls, and they don’t control the entire gulf
It doesn’t “rename” anything. It means the official US position is that the Gulf of Mexico doesn’t exist and instead it’s the Gulf of America. It’s not forcing anyone to call it that other than for official purposes–like in Governmental memos and official US documents–least of all foreign Governments or their people.
The US doesn’t own the Gulf. We can’t unilaterally change the name. But when the US Government officially refers to the Gulf, it will now be called the Gulf of America. That’s what the executive order did.
That’s literally what I said my dude, you’re just arguing semantics over the use of “renaming”
It’s not at all what you just said. Because it’s not renaming.
I honestly don’t know how to make this any simpler to digest for you. The EO changes the way the Gulf of Mexico is referenced in official correspondence for the Federal Government. It does not change the name for anyone but the federal government. That’s not the same as renaming it. The US doesn’t own it and can’t rename it.
Google is a Government contractor and is required to follow US policy to keep those contracts, which is why they’ve also changed it…
Truly I can’t make it any simpler.
It would be the same as if Congress passed memorandum changing the name of China to “Teddybear Land.” It doesn’t ipso facto change the name of China for the entire world–but instead when the federal government references China, instead of using the word China they’d use “Teddybear Land.”
It’s semantics and I cannot for the life of me understand why people are having an issue digesting what’s going on.
I said it renames the part the US controls, this argument of renaming the entire thing is a figment of your imagination, or you’re replying to the wrong message. Replace “renamed” with “named” in my sentence and then you have no leg to stand on. Your example is stupid, china is not “a part the US controls”, please do not engage in replying to my comments if you’re just going to strawman me.
I said it renames the part the US controls
Okay, and yet again (and for the last time) this is incorrect. It doesn’t rename anything.
So you are gonna have to provide a source explaining how the president using an executive order to rename international water is “policy” that Google must follow.
They you’ll have to explain why I, as a Canadian, have to see this stupid renaming in parentheses.
If the US truely doesn’t have a system beyond “once the president orders it, it’s renamed.” That’s their problem but I don’t give a fuck what they call things and I don’t know why google thinks I should.
So you are gonna have to provide a source explaining how the president using an executive order to rename international water is “policy” that Google must follow.
Exactly
Here you go;
American University Law Review (2009) - The Limits of Executive Power:
The President has broad discretion in choosing how to exercise these implied powers. Second, these implied powers are not plenary in nature. They are subject to three basic limitations: (1) the President may not, without congressional authorization, use these powers to change domestic law or create or alter existing legal obligations; (2) these powers are subject to regulation by Congress; and (3) in the event of a conflict between the exercise of these powers and congressional legislation, the latter prevails.
There’s no conflict and therefore within the power of the executive branch.
So you are gonna have to provide a source explaining how the president using an executive order to rename international water is “policy” that Google must follow.
It’s the executive branch. It would be the same as if Congress did the same, and passed a law saying “The Gulf of Mexico is now the Gulf of America.” There’s no source required, it’s literally how the US Government works, but if you want one; American University Law Review (2009) - The Limits of Executive Power:
The President has broad discretion in choosing how to exercise these implied powers. Second, these implied powers are not plenary in nature. They are subject to three basic limitations: (1) the President may not, without congressional authorization, use these powers to change domestic law or create or alter existing legal obligations; (2) these powers are subject to regulation by Congress; and (3) in the event of a conflict between the exercise of these powers and congressional legislation, the latter prevails.
There’s no federal law establishing the name of the Gulf of Mexico, so there’s no conflict with the first limitation. No one in Congress is willing to stop him, so no conflict with the second. And there’s no conflict with existing congressional legislation, so there’s no conflict with the third. So therefore the executive order is within the power of the executive branch.
Because Google is a US company and operates within the US, it has to follow US policy. The President just changed US policy to change the name of the Gulf of Mexico… So they either have to comply or be sued by the executive for not following US policy–which they’ll lose.
They you’ll have to explain why I, as a Canadian, have to see this stupid renaming in parentheses.
Because again, Google is a US company. So if you want to see Gulf of Mexico again, use any map provider that isn’t from a US company.
If the US truely doesn’t have a system beyond “once the president orders it, it’s renamed.”
That’s an extreme oversimplification of what’s going on here. But it kinda outlines how important it is to elect good people, huh?
It’s a US company following US policy as it’s a contract holder for the US Government they’re compelled to follow US policy. Whether anyone likes it or not, at least for right now, US policy is that the Gulf of Mexico for all intents and purposes is the Gulf of America.
We have a bunch of amendments…go look at the first.
I think you KNOW it’s because Pichai was there and is part of that club now.
The executive order doesn’t conflict with anyone’s freedom of speech… The President didn’t release an executive order saying “no one is allowed to call it the Gulf of Mexico anymore!”
I’m not going to type it all out again, but here you go: https://lemm.ee/post/55471251/18276179
But it kinda makes sense to be called Gulf of America since it’s located in North America.
Removed by mod
trump?
The Mexican cartel leader
Most of the drug addicts are here in the us. I’m assuming you are as well.
I don’t even live in that part of the world. Lol
Well, the continent was named America, not the Mexico continent. So the name Gulf of America just sounds right. It’s not like the name changed to the Gulf of US.
I thought it was called North America?
Yeah, “America”.
Whoa, fella, you can’t apply logic and reasoning around here.
True, lol.
President of mexico is just showing themselves to be as big of a baby as trump. Best thing to do is ignore it. Its of such little importance.
Right? Honestly there are plenty of geographical features that are named differently between different languages and countries. It really doesn’t affect anybody except people in the US.
you both are stupid. “let the bully do it”.
how about Fuck the USA? much sexier.
Sorry, that isn’t what I was trying to say. It’s not about “letting the bully do it” (which isn’t what i said at all, so i dont know why you put it in quotation marks)
It’s just a name. It’s nothing. Better to fight him on denying trans people, or taking away rights from women, or reversing climate change deals, or letting a lizard faced man child dismantle the federal governement, or promoting racism, and nazi-ism.
The name of a fucking body of water means absolutely nothing compared to some of the shit he is pulling.
I dont think being concerned with the name of the gulf matters at all compared to this.
Did you see recently the thing about plastic straws? That he wants to bring back plastic straws? This is the kind of thing he wants to change! Trump is a complete moron and he is causing a crazy amount of damage to the US and the rest of the world. But you want to fight him over changing the name of some water?
No! i will not accept my downvotes, i stand by what i said. Its not important, you are directing your anger at the wrong target.
just added maps.google.com to pihole blacklist
I wish i could add childishness to my pihole blacklist.
Seriously, think about what you are angry about here. Is this what matters to you?
I feel like people who care about something this stupid are either shills for trump or just too damn stupid to see a bigger picture. In the latter case I guess I have to give it to Trump: he threw a bone that idiots couldn’t pass up.
