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.
Why bother with this? If you want to make a point, pass regulation in Mexico to call E.E.U.U. (US in Mexico) be called Northern Mexico. Then Google is forced to comply on that territory like they claim they do for disputed sections when maps are viewed from that region. It would make for some funny reactions from people visiting Cancun or Puerto Vallarta.
Edit: plus it would show how stupid the whole rename thing is to begin with.
TIL…
The abbreviation E.E.U.U. (often written as EE. UU.) stands for Estados Unidos (United States) in Spanish. This abbreviation follows a grammatical rule in Spanish where doubling the initial letters of each word indicates plurality
So you taught me something today I did not know. Thank you!!
That rule existed in Portuguese as well, but they dropped that as indication of plurality is just… wasteful
Interestingly (or not) it’s also used in French but only in one case that I’m aware of. Monsieur is abbreviated to M. while messieurs (plural) is MM.
Oh, 2 M’s touch.
Just let our mexican and Canadian neighbors take over the USA. We’ve proven to be unworthy of making wise choices.
Wait what do they call the European Union then because that’s still EU in Spanish as well.
It’s UE in Spanish, from Unión Europea. (Non-doubled letters because it’s a single Union, there’s no plural like in “States”).
Sometimes people in Spain do use the English acronyms for both EU/USA, but I don’t think I’ve seen it often. Both UE and EEUU are more common from what I’ve seen, and also people rarely say these out loud, it’s exclusively a written language problem.
If we’re going to play that demagogic game, why not make “United States of America” be shown as “United States of North America” to reclaim the continent name back? Companies will comply if it’s an official request.
They are both states united and in north america…
Es el chapulín colorado
No contaban con mi astucia!
Google is one of many propaganda arms of the US govt. I highly doubt they’d comply with that as it doesn’t fit in with their political agenda.
At that point they would be like twitter in Brazil when they didn’t comply with fines and were blocked at the country level: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c5y06vzk3yjo
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.
Everyone needs to get used to ignoring this bullshit. The Gulf of America thing isn’t important. It doesn’t effect anyone, and there’s far too many posts about it when there are real things to pay attention to. This is purely a distraction. Stop giving it attention.
There is one part thats relevant, and thats the government suing AsPo for refusing to comply. Thats a direct attack on the First Amendment
It’s definitely a distraction tactic, but at the very least looking at Google Maps and Bing Maps makes very clear to people which megacorps are riding the oligarchy; just in case anyone held hope their favorite “techbro revolutionary” might side with them. PS: Mapquest gets it right.
Out with the oldspeak. In with the newspeak.
Reality has to BE.
Cancel all government contracts with google
And for the love of god do not switch over to another American company, or any company, go FOSS and decentralized
God I hope this happens, it will be absolutely hilarious when the GCP services on which MX infraestructure for telecommunications, research and development, industry, transportation, banking, agriculture, logistics and health is built up, crashes burning to the ground.
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.
Whenever I see Gulf of America mentioned, in my head it sounds like “This is America” in the Childish Gambino song.
Gulf of America, don’t catch you shippin now, look where I’m fishin now, potus be trippin yo (woo), gulf of america
😄
What I see is “Gulf of Swastika”. A name dictated by an authoritarian Nazi without proper procedure, that symbolizes the Trump administration.
Do it honey. Make em pay for suckin orange ass
Yeah!! Spend your money on a completely pointless lawsuit!! Fill some lawyers pockets instead of helping your citizens!!
Remember: the most important thing to professional politicians is optics! It’s what fools the morons into thinking you are doing something good!
The word “America” is not reserved for the USA alone and belongs to the entire Americas: North America, Central America, South America. As such if they want to rename the Gulf of Mexico then it should be the Gulf of North America of which both the USA and Mexico are a part of and share borders around that body of water.
Furthermore the word “America” isn’t an English word but the German bastardization of an Italian word. Specifically the word “America” was coined by Martin Waldseemüller a German cartographer who named the Americas after Italian explorer Amerigo Vespucci who explored the new continents for Spain and Portugal. So I guess the Gulf of North Amerigo is more accurate. LOL.
Amerigo Vespucci - History Cartoon ~ Innovative History ~ YouTube.
In any case, if this is the big orange blow-fish’s attempt to dis on Mexico then it’s pretty petty much like everything he does to massage his massive ego.
So it’s the gulf of Germany. Got it. Ü
VW Golf.
The US keeps it to flex on all the other American countries. It’s a display of dominance.
You wanna know what’s cool about language? It changes over time. So while the origin of a word may mean one thing, it can eventually mean something else as well or even something entirely different. Cool used to just mean temperature, but it eventually also came to refer to the attitude of a person or even how likable they are in common usage. Nimrod was a mythical hunter but thanks to Bugs Bunny and Elmer Fudd now means a stupid person. Same with “America” referring originally a set of continents. In common usage it has come to mean referencing the United States of America, mostly because people are lazy and is so much easier to say “American” than it is to describe something as “from the United States of America”. You can resist the change all you want, but eventually you sound like some old person that says automobile instead of car since car originally meant an individual portion of a train.
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…
Can someone just make a mod or something for g-maps to name all American names to like Spanish ones? Nuevo York, Guashintón Distrito de Columbia, that kinda stuff.
Guayinton or Guallinton fits better
Just access GMaps through your VPN through Mexico, and your wildest dreams can come true.
Just call it the Gulf of Fuck The Environment, We’re Getting Rich!
Sponsored by BP
…Brought to you by Carl’s Jr.
