this post was submitted on 30 Aug 2026
579 points (98.0% liked)
Technology
87733 readers
3814 users here now
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Our Rules
- Follow the lemmy.world rules.
- Only tech related news or articles.
- Be excellent to each other!
- Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
- Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
- Politics threads may be removed.
- No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
- Only approved bots from the list below, this includes using AI responses and summaries. To ask if your bot can be added please contact a mod.
- Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
- Accounts 7 days and younger will have their posts automatically removed.
Approved Bots
founded 3 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Hi, I work in the map industry. We generally don't get to decide what names to use for features. We apply what the local official name is (to simplify). That's why if you're in country A, feature X might be named something different than if you're in country B. You can imagine this would (and has) caused many conflicts around the world if we didn't display the local official name. (Switch your region via VPN and you can see this in action)
If Google renamed it to Gulf of America, no Google didn't, not really ... They just inserted the new official name for that feature according to GNIS.
Mapquest isn't changing it because an executive order doesn't change the name outside of the US executive branch. They can easily ignore petty GNIS changes.
Google is just gargling Trump's nuts because they want to.
Waze hasn't either, otherwise imma be done with it all
Hate to break it to you but google owns Waze.
Well on my map its still there as OG, so until it changes I'll use it, but always down for recommended better non-google that people contribute to pigs wastin time for speeders, mofos got everyone doin 10 under near me, highway I wanna go fast
Except it's not official. An executive order means the executive branch has to use that name. Nobody else does.
It is official in the eyes of the US Government. I'm simply explaining why some/most map companies will include the change.
The Google Maps change does only seems to be visible for people with US IPs. But I assume that Apple Maps, Mapquest, Mapbox, Bing (TIL Bing has a map feature), etc all use GNIS to label features too, right? None of them have changed the name yet. Seems unlikely that all of them would still be out-of-sync with upstream, and let Google drink their milkshake like this.
According to this Wired article:
Sure looks to me like Google made the change before the basemaps were updated. It’s now 23:40 EDT Sunday, and GNIS still says Lake Ontario…so yeah, I think this is on them. Dear Leader told them to jump, and they rushed to show him how high they could get.
It's not like we all have one live server that ingests source changes and the customers will see it immediately. There is a massively delay, release schedules, etc.
But yea, you could be right on this specific point
Good! Sounds like there’s plenty of time built in to the system for impact analysis, change management, QA, and the like, to avoid pushing unnecessary updates that end up pissing everyone off.
Who gets to determine if they're unnecessary updates?
EDIT/Update: 'Lake America' is currently under discussion from our Geopolitical Policy Board.
Trump is not a king, and outside of the executive branch, his executive orders have no binding power.
Google et. al. Are, last I checked, not part of the executive branch, and are under no obligation to abide by Trump renaming bodies of water.
They're doing it because they want to. Because they know it will make Trump happy.
It's the official GNIS name now, and is usually just piped into the maps. There aren't people actually deciding which names to use at Google, HERE, whatever, etc ... we just push sources in.
sure, ok ... guess you know more than my 20+ years experience at a digital map company that actually taught google how to make their maps.
Google deciding to continue using a dataset that has been completely captured by a megalomaniac at the head of an authoritarian regime is on them. I cannot stress enough that they do not have to use GNIS, as evidenced by all the other map apps that, y'know, don't.
Google shows the renamed gulf of mexico in europe too. From memory, it initially fully renamed it and then much later started showing both. But they're clearly not just following local gov exec policy.
Do you guys use Mt. McKinley or Denali?
So switch it back, all Nazis must (redacted)
i think that's a bit of a rash reaction to changing the name of a lake locally
You are aware this is not the only thing Trump has done, right? That there is a whole context of him and his collaborators doing shit for decades which this particular decision should be considered part of.
What you say about local names is correct, however the issue is that Demented Don has just decided that this is a good way to punish Canada. It is still surprising that a president can make such a change by executive order and there is no uproar in the US.
We've got bigger things to worry about than feature naming tbh.
It’s just symptomatic of the destruction of social and diplomatic capital (pardon the cold calculating economic word) that this old demented fools is engaged in. His economic destruction and greed and theft is another story.
1000% agree. And maps are absolutely political, but this is just another distraction.