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.
While we are at renaming things…
But it kinda makes sense to be called Gulf of America since it’s located in North America.
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.
Republicans are so good at baiting liberals into useless bullshit arguments, while they plunder stuff that actually matters.
Oh, the cartel leader criminal is throwing a fit. Lmao
Well, the continent was named America, not the US continent. So the name Gulf of America just sounds right.
Don’t sue- just threaten to block some of googles services in your country and they’ll come around real quick. Hit em where it hurts. Google isn’t hurting for lawyers.
You have to hit them in the wallet. Every time Trump does or says anything about tariffs, just starting increasing tariffs on all Tesla products.
We can’t hit Trump directly but we can hit his little friends quite easily.
Musk will have an absolute meltdown on twitter of course, but if you just ignore him he’ll give up. He’s already shown that he is prepared to back down if he’s actually facing financial penalties.
Tragically we have a dried apricot ceding power to the highest bidder. There isn’t much for other countries to do directly unless they are paying for “sock puppet time” or getting in a pissing match with a clown that makes a juggalo look smart.
This is more about controlling (collateral) damage: in this case megacorps “kissing the ring” via stupid shit like Google is doing presently. Countries can fuck with corporations far easier than we can (guess who paid for sock puppet time…)
Google is clearly attempting to make themselves more “saleable” to the ruling party by dropping things like month names or renaming universally accepted names of global features. Right now their -baseline- is where we are at currently. A lawsuit does next to nothing. It’s an operating cost. A country threatening to blacklist their service will hit them cleanly in the only thing that matters: their shareholders. Our biggest corporations have time and again rolled over for this tactic. They may have elevated themselves to a godlike status within the states but they are vulnerable outside our shores.
Google are an American company, and the government of the USA has changed the name. What else do people expect them to do?
Besides, it still say Gulf of Mexico if you’re outside the USA.
It shows up as “Gulf of Mexico (Gulf of America)” outside of the US apparently. That seems like enough to make a fuss to me; bodies of international water have specific rules around name changes and the US can’t unilaterally decide differently.
This is accurate. Here’s a screenshot from my friend in France.
Ok, that’s absurd. I thought it makes sense to change the name for people in the US if that’s the official name in the US (according to the USGS data, which has always been the official source for this info). But translating the US name into other languages that already have a name for it makes no sense.
Google is evil.
They did change that line from “do no evil” to “do any profitable amount of evil”, so this is fair play.
I’m a mexican in mexico, my phone’s in japanese and it still shows as gulf of mexico
Ha. I speak Spanish and Japanese. My girlfriend lives in Jilatopec. Sheinbaum está furiosa con Trump y me encanta.
americans can call it whatever the fuck they want, that wont suddenly change its local or english name in any other countries
Imagine being a tourist in the US, looking for an address you believe to be say, Martin Luther King Street. Can’t find it anywhere, even on Google maps, then eventually you talk to someone and find out it’s now called Elon Musk Avenue.
Not saying this is exactly the same, but if we’re letting people change the names of places on commonly used global map software willy nilly, even if it’s just region to region, we’re gonna end up with problems. It’s not like “freedom fries” back in the day that legitimately affected no one.
And I am suddenly seeing a parenthetical on the Gulf here outside the US, so there technically was a sudden change
The issue is the US does not own the gulf whereas they own the streets.
True. Guess it’s more like them getting Google to change Greenland into West Alaska
East? It’s east of Alaska…
I’d like to say I did that on purpose to show how dumb they’d be renaming it, but it is I who can’t remember my East and West
What are the rules? And who makes them?
What else do people expect them to do?
1.- Refuse-
2.- Apply only the part of the name change that’s actually covered by US jurisdiction. The Gulf of Mexico extends noticeably beyond US’s borders.
But hey this is Google we’re talking about.
Besides, it still say Gulf of Mexico if you’re outside the USA.
If I’m a eg.: Colombian, it should be
“Gulf of Mexico”“Golfo de México” wherever I stand, not “Gulf of America”.Apply only the part of the name change that’s actually covered by US jurisdiction.
Strictly speaking, per the EO, this is what they should have done. The EO defines the area to be renamed as:
the U.S. Continental Shelf area bounded on the northeast, north, and northwest by the States of Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Florida and extending to the seaward boundary with Mexico and Cuba in the area formerly named as the Gulf of Mexico
You can see exactly where that seaward boundary is on this map: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:US_ECS_Regions_2023.png
The area described is less than half the whole Gulf of Mexico.
OK, but how is Google supposed to know what nationality you are?
Doesn’t need to (but yeah yeah they’re Google, I know…). They just should name it “Gulf of México” or whatever the translated name is to the user’s device, and add an asterisk somewhere that shows a note to the effect of “a small fraction of Confederate remnants think it should be called ‘Gulf of America’”.
That is essentially what they’ve done by putting Gulf of America in brackets behind the original name.
But why? Why should any other country care about the US’s ridiculous internal politics
IP address, same way they decide what language to show the names in
the government of the USA has changed the name
When did they do that?
Or are you one of those people who would agree if Trump said “I am the state”?
It was changed by executive order, which the president has the authority to do. Google doesn’t get to go “nuh-uh” and keep it the same.
I was unaware that the executive branch encompassed the entirety of the government. Please, do elaborate.
If you want to know more about how the US government works, I’m not the person to educate you.
Clearly, since you think an executive order is a law.
Then why are you here trying to tell people that one asshole with an opinion is the government?
You can argue with strangers on the Internet as much as you like, but the fact is, the US president can and has changed the name of multiple geographic features, and arguing with me won’t change that.
Oh, you’ve been caught being dumb and your story is changing.
First it was “the government”, now it’s “the president”.
That’s not how America works, lol. Naming things is a legislative responsibility. Trump can sign as many executive orders as he wants, but it isn’t official without an act of congress and a chance for the judiciary to object.
Executive orders are not laws. You do know that, right?
Why didn’t they change it only in the US and not elsewhere? Could you imagine the uproar if Google censored Tiananmen Square world wide because of the Chinese government?
PS: Yes it was modified for everyone outside the US too. I am not American but your “president” is now allowed to change what name I have to call something?
Because Google is a US company, and not in a position to tell the US government to take a walk, that’s why.
Did the US government tell Google to censor Tiannamen Square, or are they a global company that has to observe more than the whims of a single country?
I hope other countries start renaming the US soon.
Tianamen square shows up just fine on Google maps, who is supposedly censoring them?
Travel to Beijing, open up Google search, and see if it gives you any historically accurate results about what happened there.
I’m serious, it sounds like you could use a lesson in freedom and the world outside your country.
I mean, they are to an extent. The laws of the US are ostensibly supposed to allow citizens to call things whatever they want. If the government wants to throw a hissy fit and say the constitution is meaningless after all, let them do it. At least then we could give up all of the pretense that they are supposed to care about what it says.
to allow citizens to call things whatever they want.
I very much doubt that privilege extends to a mapmaker
Why wouldn’t it? Google’s just a company, not an arm of the government. At best, maybe there is some sort of accreditation process to have their maps called “authentic” or “accurate” or whatnot, but I’ve never heard of any US law that penalizes the publication of an inaccurate map.
If there existed any valid reasoning for the change… 🤷♂️
But the Felon Dicktater is only doing it so he can claim himself architect of global geographic change. Same reason he wants Greenland, Panama, Gaza, etc.
Fuck that.
I back Sheinbaum on this one. Won’t matter, but do it anyway.
I’m thinking that there was a reason for the change; drilling for oil was blocked in the Gulf of Mexico.
There are 3200 active wells in the Gulf of Mexico.
I’m aware. I’ve been there. Kinda hard to miss em.
https://www.cnn.com/2025/01/06/business/biden-offshore-drilling-ban-trump/index.html
Dicktater brought to mind very unpleasant images
That’s a valid point, but why do you expect Google to take a principled stand on this? Take it up with your government.
In the world I want to live in…
Google would have taken a principled stand against such an attempt at a govt.
Instead, they bent the knee along with every other Tech Oligarch and, therefore, deserve the hit.
He wants to seize Greenland, Panama and Canada because they are either strategically important or have valuable resources, or both (and, in the case of Canada, because he wants revenge on Trudeau for being “woke” and standing up to his ape-dominance handshakes). This name change though is just because he hates Mexicans.
Meh I’ll still use Google.
I don’t. DuckDuckGo and an alternative email provider are wonderful.
DuckDuckGo is just Bing. And Microsoft is not any better in terms of kissing Trump’s ass.
Not quite.
DuckDuckGo’s results are a compilation of “over 400” sources according to itself, including Bing, Yahoo! Search BOSS, Wolfram Alpha , Yandex, and its own web crawler (the DuckDuckBot); but none from Google. It also uses data from sites such as wikipedia, to populate knowledge panel boxes to the right of the search results.
Its main partnership is with Bing.
And this is why it’s a problem: https://www.theregister.com/2022/06/17/brave_duckduckgo/
Still they’re right - it’s not “just Bing” that’s a bit of an over simplification IMO, like someone saying “firefox is just google chrome” because it uses google search by default.
DDG is still preferable to vanilla bing and google because the privacy is stronger and it produces useful results. There is no perfect search engine, right now we have to compromise.
I can understand why. To each their own.
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.
Since when is the big tech the arbiter of truth? It might come as a surprise to you, but Google and Apple don’t care about your holy war against Trump.
You think Google and Apple should call it the Gulf of America?
I think Google and Apple should call it whatever the official names are, not to take any sort of political stance.
Then why add “Gulf of America” in countries that do not recognize the name?
In case you have forgotten, Google is an American company, every one of their decisions is taken in California. Maybe calling everything you don’t agree “fascist” isn’t a smart idea, since it shows that you have no idea what the meaning of that word is.
That is not what I asked.
OK, let’s reverse it, and say Mexico renamed the Gulf to something else. What do you think Google should do, inside Mexico and out?
Inside Mexico they should name it whatever the Mexico calls it. Outside Mexico it should be called however it is called in the respective country.
But again, Google is based in the US, all their decisions are made there.
Nah, they’re willing collaborators.
Step two of the plan you outlined was inverted by Google, but the effect is the same: IIRC it only shows up that way for US users.
Edit: apparently that was either a lie or incomplete info, see comments elsewhere in this thread.
IIRC it only shows up that way for US users.
apparently that was either a lie or incomplete info
Where’d you first hear this?
Not judging, just curious about the information chain.
Reporting about how the maps team reclassified the US as a “sensitive country”, a la: https://www.cnbc.com/2025/01/28/google-reclassifies-us-as-sensitive-country-like-china-russia-.html
I can confirm that it shows up as both for me. I’m not in US or Mexico, and it shows as “Gulf of Mexico (Gulf of America)”. The info I saw was that it shows as GoA in the US, GoM in Mexico, and both everywhere else. At least 2 of those are true, I’m guessing all 3 are
Can confirm it’s both here in Canada where we’re not supposed to be a part of this insanity
This is stupid and cowardly of them,
What else did you expect?
It already does
I legitimately don’t understand why the U.S. isn’t the only locality where it shows up as “Gulf of America”.
Set the en-US string to “Gulf of America”. Leave literally every other region’s text string untouched from what it was 6 months ago.
When the next Democrat U.S. President gets sworn in and immediately Executive Orders it back to “Gulf of Mexico”, change the en-US string back to that.
This is all so stupid and melodramatic.
This is all so stupid and melodramatic.
That’s the point!
The new name shows only for USA. In Mexico it’s unchanged, or shown with both names.
Our president is dumb and just wants to look like she’s fighting back without actually doing anything significant.
Showing with both names does not make it any better and I’m not sure why you think it does. They’re just kowtowing to a unilateral decision made by one of the multiple countries that border the Gulf of Mexico.
I assume you would not want Taiwan to be called Chinese Taipei on Google Maps despite China calling it that.
It’s showing up worldwide. Its why Mexico is threatening to sue.
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.
Wasn’t it gulf of America at one point anyway? So it got switched back.
Nope. Although one explorer did call it Gulf of Florida at one point.
Literally no.
PLEASE.DO IT
Uninstalled 👍
Don’t forget apple
