this post was submitted on 30 Aug 2026
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Google Maps changes Lake Ontario to ‘Lake America’ for U.S. users (www.ctvnews.ca)
submitted 3 days ago by return2ozma@lemmy.world to c/technology@lemmy.world
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[–] DoctorNope@lemmy.world 17 points 2 days ago (1 children)

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:

In fact, the map for the federal government’s Geographic Names Information System database, which informs these changes, still showed Lake Ontario as of Sunday morning, with a note that the maps are “in the process of being updated to reflect this name change.”

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.

[–] silentjohn@lemmy.ml 2 points 2 days ago (1 children)

unlikely that all of them would still be out-of-sync with upstream

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.

Sure looks to me like Google made the change before the basemaps were updated

But yea, you could be right on this specific point

[–] DoctorNope@lemmy.world 1 points 2 days ago (1 children)

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

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.

[–] silentjohn@lemmy.ml 2 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

Who gets to determine if they're unnecessary updates?

EDIT/Update: 'Lake America' is currently under discussion from our Geopolitical Policy Board.