This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Watching these corporate collaborators fall all over themselves to enact the profoundly stupid and short-sighted whims of a sodden, rotting corpse when they could just…not do that…has been one of the most surreal experiences of my life.
The sad thing is, thanks to their capture of both parties, I have no conceit they’ll actually experience any consequences for it. We have handed power to some of the least-deserving ghouls the Wharton School of Business ever squeezed out.
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
Except it's not official. An executive order means the executive branch has to use that name. Nobody else does.
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.
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.
Cringe
Fuck you google
I'm Canadian and I switched to maps.here.com, a European service as it provides good transit info. We need to move away from American hegemony.
HERE Maps will include the change, I 100% guarantee it. They have Gulf of America pushed to prod servers. (switch to US vpn location and you will see it)
source: I may or may not work for them 🫠
As long as they only change it in the US, that's fine with me. I'd still rather support the EU.
FYI... Changing it in the US only is exactly what Google is doing, just like with the Gulf.
Like I said when Zuck et al were on the inauguration stage kissing the orange ass: what's the point of fuck you money if you never say fuck you?
Getting more fuck you money
For android users recommend CoMaps, or "OSMand", both are open source and privacy focused. Both use openstreetmaps data, CoMaps just have what I think is a cleaner interface. Both have offline maps, turn-by-turn navigation and frankly a lot more customization since it's not corporate owned. No ads, and no businesses who pay being stuffed in your eyes first when maps load.
Both are much improved since trying to ditch maps a few years ago and basic local business info wasn't available, now it looks to be much improved and it's a great time to jump.
Hope this helps someone.
Google also says Jerusalem is the capital of israel despite international law and virtually every other country designating Tel Aviv as the capital.
Fuck google.
I wish Trump decides to rename something in Europe and Google complies so another jump in degooglelization takes place there..
So everyone's switching to foss alternatives, right?
OSM?
Spread the word, share with your friends, etc.
I recommend CoMaps on Android, (or Organic Maps, which CoMaps forked from when Organic started enshitifying)
Canada should announce that they've changed the names of all the Great Lakes to Canadian names, like Lake Toronto, and Lake Ottawa. Make sure there's a Lake Saskatchewan, because there is no way Trump can read or pronounce it, so that will really piss him off. Maybe he'll painfully stroke out and croak, and we can all read about it the Big Beautiful Obituary.
I thought Google's policy was that they deferred to the international cartographic societies decision on place names, i.e leave it alone, but apparently they'll just give in to an international skid mark when the opportunity presents itself.
I just assumed they followed the nomenclature of whatever country they operate in.
Edit: Ah, I get it. This change is just change within the US's Executive Branch and therefore Google doesn't need to follow it at all. They're just sucking MAGA penis.
I'm not sure that Google could sink any lower.
it would be funny if Canadians started referring to South Canada instead of America
Nah, that'd be an insult to our country. We need not be associated with the dumpster fire south of us.
Makes sense as they once championed “alternative facts”. May as well live in an alternative reality.
Osmand ❤️
Except it shows up as Lake Americas in my google maps and I'm in Europe...
Mine has it in brackets. They can honestly fuck off with that.
Like I specifically searched lake Ontario.
Edit: if I go out of search there's no mention of the wrong name however.
Welp, how is MapQuest these days?
Edit: Actually, looks pretty good. I didn't know why OpenStreetMap can't autocomplete an address to save its life, but MapQuest does fine. Also, Yelp review integration and I didn't see obviously sponsored chains.
No public transit directions apparently? Which would be a problem if it weren't always faster to bike than take transit in Boston.
Good they make themselves even more untrustworthy, loss of value
Petition to rename Washington into Turdington.
I can't wait until donald realizes one of the 50 states is called "New Mexico"
I'm blaming this one on you
At least none of these tech and finance bros and their companies who can't seem to have enough of gagging on fascist dick can ever pretend to have the slightest interest in not being the biggest scum they can.
This is so unanimous to all of them next time one of those barely sentient piles off shit escapes from the likes of stanford to make a company with a slogan of "don't be evil" or whatever not even a brain dead oyster can pretend not to know they're waiting for the first nazi boot they find to start licking.
They should have made it an opt-in feature that only kicks in if you check a MAGA box on your profile.
The HOMES mnemonic is now SHAME.
(I'm sure some lib on bluesky figured this out before me)
I hope they dont choke on maga’s dick
