How Google determines the names for bodies of water in Google Earth (2008)

243 pointsposted 5 days ago
by terminalbraid
(publicpolicy.googleblog.com)

208 Comments

mapontosevenths

5 days ago

"By saying "common", we mean to include names which are in widespread daily use, rather than giving immediate recognition to any arbitrary governmental re-naming. In other words, 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. "

They violated their own policy with the gulf then.

lallysingh

5 days ago

Same name, but the company is quite different. What of that old Google is left now?

doginasuit

5 days ago

This is an interesting question to ask of any company. Every company over a long period is a Ship of Theseus. Google started out as a rowboat and now it is an ocean liner.

Investment in product quality, "Don't be evil", everything that set a company apart and allowed it to rise, it lasts only as long as it is preserved in a way that resists decay.

Is there anything left of the rowboat? I'm at the point where I am actively trying to shut Google out of my life to the degree that it is possible. And yet it is still not Microsoft. I catch a glimmer of the old google in a product release now and then.

jppope

5 days ago

To quote Christopher Nolan: “You either die a hero, or live long enough to see yourself become the villain.”

virgil_disgr4ce

5 days ago

Fun fact, according to C-Nol himself, his brother (Jonathan Nolan) wrote that line

redwood

5 days ago

And as a reminder to folks he's the writer of (the newer era) Westworld which if you haven't seen the full first season really turns into an incredible mind bender

dinkblam

4 days ago

That show should have died the hero, i.e. after season one.

PaulDavisThe1st

4 days ago

S2 was reasonably OK, IMO. But that was it. And all their talk of having a fantastic entire story laid out right from the start? I don't believe a word of it. There's no way they had thought up Rehobaum or whatever it was called back when they started work on S1.

jasomill

4 days ago

Also creator of and writer on Person of Interest, which had an okay first season but gradually got amazing in later seasons, following a roughly inverted arc from Westworld.

Person of Interest was probably the first example of superintelligent AI that actually left me thinking that it could really happen (and with the conclusion that this was not a priori a good or bad thing).

goodmythical

5 days ago

I hear there's a janitor using the handle of one of the original paddles as a mop handle.

It's only there because it wasn't inventoried and so not lost in the purge.

coef2

5 days ago

The last two words of their old motto "don't be evil"

LightBug1

5 days ago

I'm still calling the axing of Google Reader the jump the shark moment!

freecodeio

5 days ago

only the 2 founders, which seems have become quite out of touch lately

nervai

5 days ago

"The United Nations is a transparently antisemitic organisation" - Google Co Founder

https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2025/07/08/sergey-...

flir

5 days ago

He's a peach

https://edition.cnn.com/2026/09/29/politics/sergey-brin-cali...

vigilantpuma

4 days ago

Trying to defeat a badly designed tax that even the Democrats aren’t aligned is evidence of him being a bad person? I think you can probably do better.

flir

4 days ago

Buying influence erodes democracy.

$100m (focused on a single issue!) buys a lot of influence.

It's a problem that extends far beyond this one example, but this one example is a good example.

embedding-shape

4 days ago

Yes, actively working against "wealth tax" while you're wealthy, does indeed make you a bad person. A good person realize they're ahead of others, and try to help them rise as well, even if it means less wealth for them. It's called "greed" if you're looking for a specific name of this concept.

WarmWash

4 days ago

It took me a while to learn that giving money to the government isn't the highest form of good, despite also being a necessity to some degree. In fact I'm not even sure if it could make the top 10 of best ways to give money. But trust me when I was younger I definitely acted in that belief.

Like greedy Brin here has donated around $4B to charity that has gone to all manner of public good. Philanthropic organizations like his tend to be pretty efficient with getting good bang for their buck.

Had he given it to the government, which I'm sure you would call reason for celebration, well some of it would have gone to helping people directly, but most would have gone into protracted bureaucracy where just the rind ends up at the final objective. I'm actually pretty sure you yourself could write a decent list of government expenses that you would not want that money to go to.

In fact if you wrote a list of things that you would like it to go to, I'm pretty confident it would have very high overlap with what Brin does give to.

So what again are we trying to call out here? He's greedy?

ethbr1

4 days ago

> Like greedy Brin here has donated around $4B to charity that has gone to all manner of public good.

$4B out of $250B = +1.6% tax rate

And total over all years, not annual.

So no, charity fig leaf doesn't cover being a dick and fighting a meaningful wealth tax.

embedding-shape

4 days ago

> In fact if you wrote a list of things that you would like it to go to, I'm pretty confident it would have very high overlap with what Brin does give to.

Alright, lets give it a try:

- Wealth Tax

- Taxes of all sorts and kinds

What percentage of overlap do we have? I have a feeling it's zero.

> So what again are we trying to call out here? He's greedy?

We're trying to call out that working against a wealth tax because it'd impact you personally (since you're wealthy), is greedy behavior and greed is generally something most humans want to reduce, just like most of us wants less violence. We call people who favor greed and violence "bad people".

JuniperMesos

4 days ago

Nah the actual bad people are the people calling for the tax, who are primarily motivated by populist resentment of the visibly successful, and who don't have a good sense of what the actual problems in society are or how to actually fix them.

vigilantpuma

4 days ago

Again, it’s a bad tax. Judge this on the merits, not merely on the fact that it’s a wealth tax and therefore good prima facie.

embedding-shape

4 days ago

Ok, so it might need iterations. Lets implement it, then fix it once live? Nothing is ever set completely in stone.

Out of ~40 million people in California, the impact of this tax seems to be about ~250 individuals. If they were considering users of their products and services, wouldn't that amount of users compared to the entire user base, be considered almost a rounding error?

vigilantpuma

4 days ago

It’s a tax, not a casual game app.

The quality of argumentation here. “Wealth tax therefore good” “just pass it even though it’s shitty, who cares.”

How many bad laws are on the books and now it’s nearly impossible to claw them back?

freecodeio

4 days ago

what's your rank on forbes top billionaires?

hparadiz

4 days ago

He's right.

holgerschurig

2 days ago

Well, no.

Semites are also e.g. Arabs. It comes from linguistic science and denotes people speaking Hebraic, Arabic or new-Aramaic languages. Look up the philologist August Ludwig von Schlözer who coined the term if that is new to you.

Also, criticizing a country is something very normal.

When one criticizes the Japan of 1930 to 1945 ... was this anti-zen? Or anti-nipponic? Or was it about their government?

When one criticizes the Syria of 1971-1924 ... what this anti-islamistic? Or anti-arabic? Or was it about their government, specifically their dictator?

When one criticizes the Israel of recent times ... is this anti-jewish? Or anti-semitic? Or is it about their government and various movements in said country?

It's only when we criticize the Israel government that suddenly people intermix politics with religion. And also with belonging to long extinct tribe groups. Or that they blame e.g. a synagogue congregation in Denmark with human-right violations of Israel settlers. Suddenly people stop being able to differentiate.

I see that there are countries that are anti-jewish (like Iran). And Persians aren't Semites, so maybe they are also anti-semitic, I can't judge this. But neither Iran nor Yemen or other puppet-organizations like the Hezbollah rule the UN. I'm quite sure that they can't even nudge the UN.

So claiming that the UN is anti-semitic is un-factional. I have seen zero evidence, and the people claiming this haven't brought up any evidence. The most they can bring up is that some UN sub-organization doesn't do the exact bidding of the current Israel government. Or that some UN sub-organization has the occasional mole or spy amongst them ... but hey, I don't want to know how many organizations have the odd moles or spy from the Mossad in them. That doesn't make them wholly israel-controlled.

hn_throwaway_99

5 days ago

Not just out of touch, but downright psychopathic in my opinion. I used to greatly admire Larry Page. He seemed like a really smart, driven, level-headed guy. When the news came out that he was basically fine with AI wiping out humanity, as it would just be the natural evolution of intelligence, and to fight against that would be "speciesist", all I good think was "what a psycho".

And I really don't think I'm exaggerating Page's opinion on this, though I'm happy to be corrected if I'm wrong.

redwood

5 days ago

Incredible back story here if I can trust Gemini on this as that dates back to over 10 years ago when Musk accused Larry Page of being too obsessed with bringing about AI and hence co-founds OpenAI... the irony of course being that OpenAI raced ahead while Google has been conservative

nextaccountic

4 days ago

I'm willing to bet he's speciesist in relation to actual, existing species of other animals

ctmlr

4 days ago

Extreme wealth seems to cook people's brains.

munk-a

4 days ago

Counter point - accumulating extreme wealth seems to require a cooked brain. I genuinely believe that level headed people are unable to reach more than a few million in accumulated wealth as they'll clearly see how much more that money would benefit others compared to themselves.

ethbr1

4 days ago

Counter counter point - we've constructed a society that provides excess rewards to people with cooked brains and antisocial behavior

ctmlr

4 days ago

There is a theory that the industrial and information revolutions rewarded certain types of neurodiversity more than what you was natural, I think that is entirely plausible.

While some of those traits may be prone to antisocial behavior, given the right social cooking conditions, they are also natural so I don't think people with those traits shouldn't be considered "cooked" from from brith either.

There are also seemingly neurotypical people who win the lottery and get cooked, I think it mostly comes from alienation because wealth changes how others around you act.

mapontosevenths

2 days ago

I think I'm with the other commenter on this one. It's a fundamental truth that only a rare, and very off-kilter, personality will earn their first $100m dollars and think "Gosh, I need more money!" Then continue working long hours to become billionaires despite already having enough to retire to a private island with a full time maid and butler or spend their life on philanthropy.

To these people it starts to feel obvious that Ayn Rand was right, because Ayn Rand would have agreed with them. They come to feel that they were rewarded because they are more righteous than others, and they are more righteous than others because they were rewarded. Capitalism becomes a religion, rather than a means to an end and money becomes it's own goal instead of a symbolic token that represents real wealth. The piece of paper is now worth more than the things it can buy.

Eventually, due to the broken feedback loop that social order was meant to provide but no longer does, they lose the common moral boundaries that tie them to other men completely and become a special kind of sociopath.

rickdeckard

5 days ago

It seems their actual policy is "the policy of Primary Local Usage":

"Under this policy, the English Google Earth client displays the primary, common, local name(s) given to a body of water by the sovereign nations that border it. If all bordering countries agree on the name, then the common single name is displayed (e.g. "Caribbean Sea" in English, "Mar Caribe" in Spanish, etc.). But if different countries dispute the proper name for a body of water, our policy is to display both names, with each label placed closer to the country or countries that use it."

Which basically means "multiple names until all bordering countries agree on the same name", if I'm not mistaken

Gormo

5 days ago

The problem here is that the "primary, common, local" name used in a country sometimes conflicts with what specific government institutions in those countries may "officially" use.

In the situation with the Gulf, it's unambiguously true that the "primary, common, local" name used in the US by English-speaking Americans is "Gulf of Mexico", but they decided to adhere to an artificial name change declared by a political figure, whose authority to make that "official" only extends to a single branch of a single level of government.

amiga386

5 days ago

Not only that, but the only area he's authorised to name is a stretch of the US coastline and its EEZ.

He has no authority to name international bodies of water - i.e the large part in the centre where Google should be writing "Gulf of Mexico" because that's its name.

But he does have the ability to cause trouble for the giant corporations based in his country that serve map images to most of the rest of the world. The giant corporations also see that he grants favours for fealty. So it's actually the unofficial power he has that's the problem, rather than what's within his legal remit.

rickdeckard

5 days ago

> "In the situation with the Gulf, it's unambiguously true that the "primary, common, local" name used in the US"

And that's my point. It depends on how "primary" or "common" is defined, the article has no definition of it. Who gets to decide that, Google?

The easy (and predictable) cop-out is to follow a governments definition of what is "the expected primary and common name", and then show that name in brackets.

The only restriction this "definition" seems to set is that your country needs to be adjacent to the landmark to define its name, so "a ruler" cannot decide to rename e.g. Australia unless he is either "the ruler" of Australia or of a country adjacent to it.

And we're back to square one.

--

EDIT: Yes, I also read this sentence: "By saying "common", we mean to include names which are in widespread daily use, rather than giving immediate recognition to any arbitrary governmental re-naming.".

The question remains how to quantify "widespread daily use".

It creates room to justify against an immediate change of a name, but doesn't define when this criteria is reached.

And from all I see, all this doesn't seem to matter anyway, because a new local naming will anyway be added in brackets (see Gulf of Mexico). What am I missing?

CrazyStat

5 days ago

The article does have definitions of both primary and common, though:

> By saying "primary", we aim to include names of dominant use, rather than having to add every conceivable local nickname or variation. By saying "common", we mean to include names which are in widespread daily use, rather than giving immediate recognition to any arbitrary governmental re-naming. In other words, 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.

Gormo

5 days ago

Which is consistent with Wikipedia's naming policy, and the Wikipedia community already puts in the effort to sort out what primary names to use for things.

If Google doesn't want to try to discern the proper "primary, local, common" names on their own, they do worse than just using Wikipedia's names and call it a day.

OskarS

5 days ago

It's a very lawyerly distinction you're making here that's willfully blind to what's really going on. The common-sense reading "primary, common, local name" is that it should be called the Gulf of Mexico, as that is what it is called in the USA.

If the nutso president of Turkmenistan decided one day that the Caspian Sea's real name was the Turkmen Sea, there's absolutely no way that Google Maps would rename it on their maps. The reason they renamed it in this case is not because "well, the government said so, so we have no choice!". It's (obviously!) done to not piss of Trump, and pissing off Trump would be bad for their business. They can hide behind lawyerly arguing all they want, but that is the real reason.

ElevenLathe

5 days ago

I'm not so sure on the Turkmen Sea example. Google is (trying to) sidestep this issue as much as possible by making the name on the map depend on your physical location, language and localization settings, or both. They could easily make the Caspian Sea say Turkmen Sea only in Turkmenistan, and probably would if they wanted to keep doing business in Turkmenistan. This is already how it works for Lake Ontario: if I access from the US, it says "Lake America", but if I VPN to somewhere in Europe, it says "Lake Ontario (Lake America)".

In terms of lawyerly distinctions, I would actually argue that there is still no legal basis to the rename. The president has directed the federal executive branch to refer to Lake Ontario as Lake America, but...that's it. It literally doesn't and can't apply to Google. No law has been passed, and even if there had been it's pretty clear that it's a 1st Amendment issue to compel private entities to refer to things in particular ways -- it would be a slam dunk even on this Supreme Court. Their decision to do it is a voluntary act meant to curry favor with this administration, or at least to avoid pissing it off. This isn't like the Indian laws that make it illegal to publish a map that shows Kashmir as part of Pakistan, it's just a memo to the federal bureaucracy. Yes, this doesn't really matter because there are punishments that are within the power of the president (like cancelling contracts, or cooking up bogus DoJ investigations, or failing to resist antitrust enforcement, etc.) that they want to avoid. This just goes to illustrate that the rule of law in the United States is mostly a fantasy.

vigilantpuma

4 days ago

> Google is (trying to) sidestep this issue as much as possible by making the name on the map depend on your physical location, language and localization settings, or both. They could easily make the Caspian Sea say Turkmen Sea only in Turkmenistan, and probably would if they wanted to keep doing business in Turkmenistan. This is already how it works for Lake Ontario: if I access from the US, it says "Lake America", but if I VPN to somewhere in Europe, it says "Lake Ontario (Lake America)".

I also assumed that that was happening, and that might even have made sense, but according to my Canadian coworker, Lake Ontario also shows up as Lake America for him.

ElevenLathe

4 days ago

Like I said, I just tried that and my results say it's happening. GeoIP isn't perfect though, and US/CA telecom infra is hopelessly intermingled, so maybe it's just a technical limitation. I can say when I look from Austin, it's "Lake America", but if I look from Geneva it's "Lake Ontario (Lake America)".

bathtub365

4 days ago

In the iOS Google Maps app from Canada it shows me Lake Ontario

svanegmond

4 days ago

There are government managed GIS databases that provide the official names of things. This is the source of truth map makers draw on.

Gormo

4 days ago

Perhaps "truth" should be in quotation marks there.

majorchord

5 days ago

> whose authority to make that "official" only extends to a single branch of a single level of government.

Yes, and Google has huge contracts with the government, meaning they must adhere to their rules if they want to keep those contracts.

klrefg

4 days ago

What rules? There are no laws that would require Google or other private entities (or for that matter the overwhelming majority of government organizations) to use any absurd name that the president came up with instead of the actual names. Obviously they feel coerced or are just generally into boot licking but its the opposite of “rules”.

majorchord

4 days ago

> What rules?

The terms of the legal contract they both would have signed.

Companies generally don't get to do business with the US Government without following their strict rules.

Gormo

4 days ago

By "strict rules" are you referring to the actual laws that govern the structure of federal contractor relationships, or are you talking about arbitrary provisions that executive branch officials attempt to include in contracts without reference to those laws?

majorchord

3 days ago

Both. But these "arbitrary provisions" are extremely common in business contracts, and not inherently illegal unless it's asking you to break a law... but a judge can still enforce the terms if one side is not cooperating.

hn_throwaway_99

5 days ago

Wow, thanks for pointing this out. I'll do a mea culpa then. I was uncomfortable making Google the final arbiter of place names, as I didn't find a good reason why we should trust Google more than the democratically elected government of our country.

But I really like this policy. Even though it still relies on Google's definition of "common usage", it makes naming much less arbitrary and more sensical.

I was wrong in my previous analysis. Google had a clear, sensible, defined, published policy, and they broke it to appease a wannabe autocrat.

u8

4 days ago

Lake America, Gulf of America, and Mt. McKinley. The last being arguably the only sensible one based off "common names".

Literally no person not suffering a mental health crisis seriously calls these bodies of water GoA or LA. You could not find a single healthy adult on the Great Lakes who says anything other than Lake Ontario.

Absurd from Google and frankly they need to be punished. I want corporations to be scared of wading into politics again.

xdennis

4 days ago

While I'm a right winger and I think all these changes are stupid, including Mt. McKinley, I do appreciate how much of a brilliant move it is on Trump's part. It forces leftist to waste so much time complaining about meaningless things.

unethical_ban

4 days ago

Drown the government like a baby in a bathtub, eh?

rickdeckard

5 days ago

I guess the "Maps" Team follows a different policy than the "Earth" team...

Although there is also no definition of "common usage". A new name might already qualify if the local government adjacent to this landmark announces to only use this new name from now on.

Reading the article, I assume this would cause the new name to be immediately shown in brackets next to the old name, or am I missing something?

mapontosevenths

5 days ago

> Although there is also no definition of "common usage".. am I missing something

Common usage is defined in the article as the widespread name used by the local people to refer to it.

lopis

5 days ago

The moment the president of the US renamed those bodies of water, it became commonly used in all sort of publications since then. It fits their description, no matter how silly.

croon

5 days ago

[Citation needed]

Yes, a lot of publications reported on the presidents action. I do not have the same experience as you that there's widespread use of the alternative name outside of this context.

klrefg

4 days ago

It’s commonly used to illustrate how absurd are some of the things the US government is doing. It’s not commonly used to refer to the actual bodies of water.

rickdeckard

5 days ago

Don't know why you are downvoted, that's how the whole article still can be interpreted.

The only change I can read from it, is that they don't need to apply a renaming from Day#1

ModernMech

4 days ago

That was "Don't be evil" Google. This is "Do the right thing" Google, completely different. Here, "right" means "what's best for the company" and if that means bending the knee to a wannabe dictator, that's the right thing.

mahboi

4 days ago

Google Maps has had a different policy from this for a long time

poulpy123

5 days ago

It's an american company, whatever they say come with an asterisk saying whatever they say it depends on what the powers in the USA decide (and it's the same for other countries with their own companies).

Anyway I don't think google should be the one choosing the names they call water bodies. They just need to use the official names for the IPs countries, and show lake america, gulf of america, ocean america, asian america, european america and african america if Trump makes it official, but only for the US IPs.

mapontosevenths

5 days ago

The great state of Indiana once declared that pi was equal to exactly 3.2. [0]

Should they also break all of their code by adhering to that falsehood because it was politically expedient?

Nah. Truth is a real thing, and I want to live in a world were facts are not dictated to us by failed gameshow hosts who happened to turn political in their retirement years.

[0] https://cs.uwaterloo.ca/~alopez-o/math-faq/mathtext/node18.h...

lern_too_spel

4 days ago

That pi bill never became law.

encrypted_bird

4 days ago

I would say their point still stands.

Whether the bill was passed is ultimately irrelevant.

brookst

5 days ago

Do you think Google should serve customers or politicians?

As a user I want the map names I know, not whatever BS some egomaniac politician announced yesterday.

williamdclt

5 days ago

I don't know... I tend to agree with you (especially in this case), but I can also see cases where that's actually not what I'd expect. My hometown has a square that everyone knows as the "tribunal square" (which used to be its official name), but that's not been its official name in decades and about 30% of people don't even know the current official name, yet I would expect a map to refer to it by its current official name and not "tribunal square".

Maybe not quite the same as in this case, the entity who names the square actually owns the square, which isn't the case in the gulf of mexico naming situation. But there is some grey area I think.

scottyah

4 days ago

What do you want to see when streets get renamed to Martin Luther King Jr Blvd? Or renamed away from Caesar Chavez? How long do you wait for the "common name" to take precedence?

klrefg

4 days ago

Street names are fundamentally different. You wait until the new name actually becomes commonly used and not just a deranged joke.

user

4 days ago

[deleted]

pixl97

5 days ago

>Do you think Google should serve customers or politicians?

Why not ask the question this way.

Do you think Google should serve people with money in their hand or a gun to their head?

user

4 days ago

[deleted]

poulpy123

5 days ago

That's why I wrote official. If the US as a country and as an institution change the name of a place, it is neither the problem nor the role of google to decide if it is good or not. I would not be happy if my president decided to rename the united kingdom to the îles normandes (normandy isles), but I do think that once official google should change the name

klrefg

4 days ago

Well first the president has to have the actual legal power to “rename” a geographic area or a body of water. Which is not exactly the case. Same way he can’t redefine the meaning of words and such.

rickdeckard

5 days ago

> "show lake america, gulf of america, ocean america, asian america, european america and african america if Trump makes it official, but only for the US IP"

I would maybe even welcome that approach at this stage, just to demonstrate the absurdity of those decisions.

They could actively encourage also other countries to rename all foreign landmarks as they please, to fast-track a separate "international naming" convention so people can again communicate across borders...

shermantanktop

5 days ago

Exactly, that's why en-us is different than en-gb, en-ca, or even en-jp.

jezzamon

5 days ago

Disclaimer: work for Google

This article is not as pure as it might seem but I think this is also a post-hoc reasoning to explain what decision they went with for the "Persian Gulf" / "Arabian Gulf" decision, and Google then proceeded to change their stance on that in the following years:

"Google had previously put both Persian Gulf and Arabian Gulf on its Google Maps. After May 2012, it removed both names from the body of water stating that it does not name every place in the world and that it did not want to take a political stance. Iranians complained about the change and started a Twitter campaign asking "Where's the Persian Gulf?".[66] Since 2016, Google Maps has displayed both Persian Gulf and Arabian Gulf on the body of water and shows "either Arabian or Persian Gulf to local users, depending on geolocation and language settings."[67] Google Earth shows both names, unless viewed through a server from a Gulf Coast Arab country, in which case it labels it simply "Arabian Gulf"." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persian_Gulf_naming_dispute#:~...

Evidently Google in bending the knee with the America naming but I think they also haven't exactly taken a purely principled stance in the past either

philipov

5 days ago

The key quote:

> But if different countries dispute the proper name for a body of water, our policy is to display both names, with each label placed closer to the country or countries that use it.

Clearly that policy has changed since 2008. Not surprising, since that's before they decided to officially be evil.

user

4 days ago

[deleted]

ericmay

5 days ago

Well if you think about it the “don’t be evil” slogan was never really true in the first place.

The expansion of the internet advertising industry, addiction algorithms via YouTube and/or other dark patterns, and more were pretty evil from the start. If you need a slogan to remind you to not be evil, maybe you shouldn’t be anywhere near power. It’s one of those tells in advertising - if you have to tell me you are something you probably aren’t whatever you are claiming to be.

Renaming Gulf of Mexico to Gulf of America, and renaming Lake Ontario to Lake America just aren’t in the same room in terms of “evil” things. Annoying perhaps? Sure. Evil? Not. A. Chance.

Nobody really cares about this stuff in day-to-day life besides people who desire to be outraged as a way of entertaining themselves or mask over some other personal deficiency they have.

What countries call it the South China Sea? What does France call the English Channel?

Had this occurred 100 years ago we wouldn’t even be talking about it today.

philipov

5 days ago

Looks like the French name for the English Channel is La Manche (The Sleeve) and many other countries follow this name. Whatever you think of renaming things, however, the policy of giving all the names for a place was a good one.

ericmay

5 days ago

It's an ok policy. For example I don't want to see "Chinese Taiwan/Republic of Taiwan" when I view Taiwan on a map as an America. It's just Taiwan to me and I'm not concerned with what people from other countries call it.

Same thing basically with the English Channel. It's just the English Channel. I don't want to see a bunch of different names for it. If the French want Google to show it as La Manche for French people that makes sense.

scottyah

4 days ago

It's a complicated policy. What about if you're travelling in France? If someone gives you directions do you want it to not be shown on the map because you call it one thing? What about Canada, where part of the country would want the English Channel and the other La Manche. I get why showing two names would help a lot.

ericmay

4 days ago

Sure but you can leave some of those up to local nuances - like in Canada maybe they show both. In the US maybe they don't since we only call it the English Channel.

But I'd say that it's probably not a big deal anyway because how often are you going to run into such a scenario, and even if you do how would Google/whoever capture a lot of informal names for things? A little bit of confusion is fine too anyway.

scottyah

4 days ago

At google scale I imagine at least millions of times per day if not more. For what it's worth, here in CA it's just "English Channel" and I like that. I'm just saying that I don't see a way to do it perfectly every time, I agree that a little bit of confusion is OK.

DocTomoe

5 days ago

And then there are European countries that just use a combination. Germany has 'Ärmelkanal' (literally: sleeve channel). If you can't make everyone happy, make everyone angry.

philipov

4 days ago

According to the policy in this blog (and remember this is from 18 years ago), they only need to make the people who border it happy, not everyone.

aeyes

5 days ago

What has changed? On my Google Maps it shows as: Gulf of Mexico (Gulf of America).

I'm located south of the equator.

BryantD

5 days ago

It only shows Gulf of America if you’re in the US. It should, according to this policy, show both no matter where you are.

lopis

5 days ago

Well technically it also says that in Japan they only display "Sea of Japan" in the local language (Japanese), so displaying just "Gulf of America" in the local language follows. This blog never expected that the USA would be involved in this kind of dispute.

greycol

4 days ago

No because americans actually commonly call it the Gulf of Mexico (despite US government fiat dictating it should be called the Super Intelligent Gulf and anyone against that being double plus ungood), Japanese people don't commonly call it the East Sea. That's the difference.

munk-a

4 days ago

Google Maps shows Gulf of Mexico (Gulf of America) to Canadians - it does properly label Lake Ontario, though. The idiocy isn't limited just to the US.

dbbk

4 days ago

This isn't the current policy

DocTomoe

5 days ago

I'm in Germany, it shows me the real name, and the clownshow name. It does the same for Lake Ontario.

When I VPN to other countries, it does the same.

Not sure where you got your wisdom from.

BryantD

4 days ago

"It only shows Gulf of America if you’re in the US." I didn't say it didn't show both if you're in another country.

afavour

5 days ago

So wild to be living in a time where the most powerful man in the world is very obviously turning senile and those that surround him choose to indulge his outbursts rather than address the problem.

reaperducer

5 days ago

Happens all the time.

I've heard it called Michael Jackson Syndrome.

brookst

5 days ago

He’s stolen billions of dollars and is too senile to protect it. Everyone’s angling for a piece of the grift.

dinkblam

4 days ago

Do you mean Trump or Musk?

cbondurant

5 days ago

Of course, the solution described here is not a perfect one, (as perfect solutions don't really exist when it comes to messy human things like international politics) but it at least follows from an easy to identify set of principles on how ambiguous situations like these should be handled.

Then you look at the current day with the "Gulf of America" which fails to be primary, common, or local, and just get disappointed.

Trasmatta

5 days ago

The title of the post is actually:

> How Google determines the names for bodies of water in Google Earth

But the HN link is

> Google determines the names for bodies of water in Google Earth

Is this one of those cases where HN automatically changes the submission name? Because removing the `how` really changes the meaning here.

yreg

5 days ago

Yes, leading How in title is always removed and often leads to worse titles.

I don't like these magical (unexpected) solutions.

cubefox

5 days ago

Yes. There is some old regex (probably written 20 years ago) which automatically tries to improve the titles. One of the more silly rules is to remove "how" from the beginning.

hsuduebc2

5 days ago

I would guess that author just shortened the title which was too long for hn?

phyzome

5 days ago

No, HN has a braindead feature that autostrips certain words from titles.

alistairSH

5 days ago

"We want Google Earth to merit users' trust as an authoritative reference..."

I guess they've changed their minds since 2008... Their display of "Gulf of America" without "Gulf of Mexico" and "Lake America" without "Lake Ontario" is at odds with their declared policy.

GS_TO

5 days ago

I was literally swimming in Lake Ontario when I learned it was now Lake America. Nice capitulation, Google.

ArekDymalski

5 days ago

Looking at my Google Maps right now I see:

Lake Ontario (Lake America)

does it mean that the complete name change has been introduced only locally, in US?

vaillancourtmax

5 days ago

I still see only "Lake Ontario" on my end (from Canada).

poulpy123

5 days ago

I see Golfe du Mexique (Golfe d'Amerique) from France in gmaps, and golfe du mexique/gulf of mexico/golfo des mexico on the maps supported by leaflet (depending on the provider)

rob74

5 days ago

I (in Germany) get "Lake Ontario (Lake America)" too, as well as "Golf von Mexiko (Golf von Amerika)". Maybe so the AfD leaders don't tell on Google to their pal Trump?

rtkwe

5 days ago

That seems to be the pattern, US visitors get only the stupid new name while visitors outside the US get the Old Name (New/US Name). It's consistent across Gulf of Mexico and Lake Ontario.

munk-a

4 days ago

Except in Canada where we get the silly Gulf of Mexico sub-script name but Lake Ontario is labeled just that.

user

5 days ago

[deleted]

antonvs

4 days ago

The name hasn't even changed in the US. Trump issued an executive order about it, which has no legal power over anyone outside of the federal government. It's not a law, it wasn't passed by Congress.

Google's capitulation is purely out of a combination of fear of retribution and the desire to suck up to power due to greed.

croon

5 days ago

This is the one I find most hilarious, as Ontario was named after the lake, not the other way around. So the temper tantrum reaction in trying to spite Canada wholly misses the mark.

munk-a

4 days ago

In one fell swoop Trump accidentally made all Ontario Residents Americans and entitled them to Social Security benefits.

alansaber

5 days ago

Are we surprised that technology companies are extremely mercenary? Why?

mrtesthah

4 days ago

It’s not really a matter of being surprised, is it? It’s a matter of whether they should be mercenary in the first place. Claiming that some behavior was expected is just another way to shut down criticism through cynicism.

jordanb

5 days ago

Tech companies spent decades trying to sell themselves as an enlightened class of nobel philosopher kings.

This going all the way back to John Perry Barlow and a utopia in cyberspace to escape the right wing world of Reagan and Thatcher. But it reached its zenith around the "Arab Spring" with the idea that through connecting people the tech companies were giving voice to the voiceless and creating a new world of participatory democracy.

Many of us developed an interest in technology substantially because of the promise they were selling

Yet then, the moment they received the tiniest bit of pushback they all threw in fully and enthusiastically with Trump and are now even facilitating the Right Wing Internationale as we see with the Zuck trying to silence Lula supporters in Brazil.

It's basically the mother of all rug pulls and yeah, people are a little sore

magimas

5 days ago

mh, there's some truth to this, but I think it's much more that a split emerged in the community. There was originally a coalition between the social progressive movement and the techno-liberal/libertarian STEM side.

But all the stuff that happened from 2012 to 2024 had disenfranchised a lot of the actual engineers that do the real work with the progressive movement. There were a lot of early warnings, but they were ignored and instead silenced via social pressure.

Now the progressives are shocked that they couldn't just ratchet their causes ever further without losing support. And it is crazy who the techno-libertarian side joined forces with, but it was also obvious this was bound to happen at some point. You can't just continually ignore the grievances of your allies and then be shocked when they turn against you.

jordanb

5 days ago

> techno-liberal/libertarian STEM side.

John Perry Barlow-esque techno libertarianism is dead.

Modern network state authoritarianism is unrecognizable from the perspective of old-style technolibertarians.

If you had told those people the modern silicon valley was working to build a Panopticon and sell it to the TLAs they would not have believed you!

mmooss

4 days ago

> If you had told those people the modern silicon valley was working to build a Panopticon and sell it to the TLAs they would not have believed you!

I think they would have absolutely believed it - that's what they were worried about and fought against. They would have not believed that libertarians and progressives (to use the terms of this thread) have adopted such an absolutely helpless, defeatest attitude and have therefore become moribund and ineffective.

mmooss

4 days ago

The OP also is an interesting tour of some authoritative geographic organizations and their policies on nomenclature.

  United Nations Cartographic Section
  U.N. Conference on the Standardization of Geographical Names
  International Hydrographic Organization (IHO)
  US National Geographic Society
  UK Royal Geographical Society

LetsGetTechnicl

5 days ago

I miss when we didn't have a deranged pedophile dementia patient in the white house...

Ylpertnodi

4 days ago

...narrows it down by not much.

xnx

4 days ago

The craziest thing here is that they used to allow comments on the corporate blog.

crazygringo

4 days ago

Not really sure what the point is in posting some ancient policy from 2008, almost two decades ago?

Policies change and evolve. What would be more notable would be if they didn't.

And in this case, I'm not surprised at all. Trying to be the arbiter of what is considered common place names feels like a thankless and ultimately impossible task. If I were Google, I would quickly give up on that as well and simply follow official sources.

Don't like it? Then vote for the other guy next election. That's what living in a democracy is about. If anything, sticking to government names gives people even more reason to vote for the other party next election. The more people who get exposed to these dumb name changes on Google Maps, the better.

1vuio0pswjnm7

4 days ago

"Trump bragged at a rally that `Google wouldn't have taken my call in the first term. Now they kiss my ass.`"

https://www.theverge.com/policy/1013485/trump-google-kiss-my...

"While listing off his accomplishments, he mentioned his decision to rename the Gulf of Mexico and Lake Ontario.

"I called Google, Google Maps. See, Google wouldn't have taken my call in the first term. Now they kiss my ass.""

excalibur

4 days ago

> But if different countries dispute the proper name for a body of water, our policy is to display both names, with each label placed closer to the country or countries that use it.

Is anyone actually able to verify this behavior? All I'm seeing is the Trumpy names no matter where I look.

helsinkiandrew

5 days ago

Presumably related:

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/oct/22/trump-atlant...

> Donald Trump said Google rejected his request to rename the Atlantic Ocean after himself or America. Speaking at a rally in South Carolina on Wednesday, the president said he had called Google’s CEO, Sundar Pichai, to ask whether the company could “handle” his proposal.

>According to Trump, Pichai rejected the latest proposal. Trump described the Google CEO’s response by saying, “No, no, no. This time I’m not doing it … Oceans are different, sir. They cover … a lot of countries. Please don’t ask us to do that.”

_verandaguy

5 days ago

@dang: title's off; the blog post is titled "How Google determines the names for bodies of water in Google Earth."

The how is operative, I think, since it changes the title from being about the process of how Google determines a name when it's there, to being about Google acting as some kind of rogue despot that goes around naming bodies of water.

Jordan-117

5 days ago

For a website focused on the latest and most sophisticated tech, I'm continually surprised at how clunky and "dumb" the various post title filters here are.

igleria

4 days ago

I have a law of nature for this:

The Spanish proverb “en casa de herrero, cuchillo de palo” (literally: "in the blacksmith's house, a wooden knife") means that the things you would most expect someone to have or fix are often missing or neglected in their own home or life

pbhjpbhj

4 days ago

In UK English we have "the cobbler's children have no shoes", which seems similar.

I always thought it was a statement about poverty, but online sources say it's about not applying one's expertise to one's own situation. I'm not sure I agree with that interpretation.

tomhow

4 days ago

> For a website focused on the latest and most sophisticated tech

That's not really what we are :) It's part of what we talk about, sure, but mostly we're a site for curious conversation.

We actually don't want to automate things in ways that seem “polished” and “perfect” all the time. Which individual or software system would we want to be the arbiter of that? We like that the software does a rough approximation in cases like these, then through collaboration between the community and the moderators we arrive the best outcome in the end.

cubefox

5 days ago

[flagged]

dumb_young_kid

5 days ago

I believe it took less than three days, based on a quick search [0][1]. I did not read in detail to find out how much less.

It seems a clearer case of following a similar policy (though for land, not water), since Denali was already the primary, common, and local name for the mountain in Alaska, just not across the US as a whole [2]. I am not aware of the Gulf of America or Lake America as common names; the Gulf of America was occasionally a joke, though.

It's also not clear to me that it's fair to say "the Democrats renamed some mountain," since it was partly a clear response to an Alaskan request, made by both the Republican and Democratic Senators of Alaska [3], although the officials who made the final decision were all Democrats.

[0] https://searchengineland.com/mount-mckinley-denali-google-bi... [1] https://www.doi.gov/node/17570 [2] https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/CRPT-113srpt93/html/CRPT... [3] https://www.congress.gov/bill/113th-congress/senate-bill/155

anew

5 days ago

Apples and Oranges. Denali is and was a name used for thousands of years. Nobody suggested naming the mountain Mt Czolgosz.

cubefox

4 days ago

So with this argument, all other English mountain names in the US should also be restored to their original names?

psbp

5 days ago

Alaskans used Denali for generations, before and after it was arbitrarily named McKinley.

chipotle_coyote

5 days ago

This article on the Google blog is about naming disputes between countries, not name changes driven by changing political winds within the same country. Of course, you know that and you're just trolling, which also explains why the comment is downvoted. You're welcome.

freedomben

5 days ago

I have the same question. What did happen? Did Google just change it or did they display both like the 2008 policy?

This seems like a question that should be able to factually answer with something like, "they changed it and did not include both names" or "they changed it but included both names". I don't see how it's a troll to wonder about that.

BryantD

5 days ago

Please re-read the policy. You will notice that it refers to “bodies of water” and “international geopolitical disputes.” Denali is neither a body of water or the subject of any international disagreement, given that it’s contained within the borders of the US. I believe Google just changed it, but you can see why the question is not in fact relevant to the current discussion.

freedomben

5 days ago

That's a fair point, thank you

cubefox

5 days ago

It's a related question which clearly has some relevance here, even though the case is not completely analogous.

BryantD

5 days ago

The name of the mountain was changed. Note that mountains aren’t bodies of water, so the link is not relevant to this question, and Denali isn’t bordered by multiple countries, so Google presumably feels that the US has the right to name it.

And you’re getting downvoted because, as per the above, it’s an irrelevant question.

But I’ll indulge you just a bit more. The principle here is not “renaming things is bad!” The principle is that indulging an authoritarian who’s trying to unilaterally rename territory his country doesn’t own is bad, particularly when he’s doing so in a fit of pique (Lake Ontario).

As you may or may not be aware (I wasn’t), the Alaskan state legislature passed a bill in 1975 requesting that the mountain be renamed. Trump didn’t even try to get Congress to pass any bills before renaming things.

Hope this all helps clarify and gives you some reason to rethink the MAGA propaganda that tries to equate Denali and the Gulf of Mexico.

freedomben

5 days ago

Not GP, but thank you those are interesting points.

However I think you're assuming/reading into the question a whole lot more than is there. Unfortunately your otherwise good answer comes across very hostile because you are assuming (rightly or wrongly) that the asker is parroting MAGA propaganda. I can assure you I am very much not MAGA, yet I thought it was a good question because it's interesting to see if/when Google stopped their 2008 policy and why. Your "why" makes sense to me, but you almost lost me with stuff like, "Hope this all helps clarify and gives you some reason to rethink the MAGA propaganda that tries to equate Denali and the Gulf of Mexico" which feels completely unwarranted.

BryantD

5 days ago

I don’t think there’s a right or wrong about whether or not the asker is parroting MAGA propaganda; the Denali false equivalence is absolutely something that comes up all the time in right-wing circles. Possibly the asker didn’t intend to parrot MAGA propaganda. If so, well, perhaps there’s a lesson here for them about reading carefully before posting. I don’t think it’s unresonable to ask HN posters to read the article with some care and again, Denali is in no way an equivalent situation.

beanjuiceII

5 days ago

[flagged]

nancyminusone

4 days ago

I think you like these new names better mainly because you think it makes other people angry.

anew

5 days ago

No more than Nebraska is now "Dipshit Central", see how that works?

Dunewalnut22

5 days ago

[flagged]

chipotle_coyote

5 days ago

No, it doesn't. Quoting the document: "If different countries dispute the proper name for a body of water, our policy is to display both names, with each label placed closer to the country or countries that use it" (emphasis in original).

This sounds to me like for all users it should display both names. Perhaps to US users it displays "Gulf of America (Gulf of Mexico)" and everywhere else it displays "Gulf of Mexico (Gulf of America)", although the literal text suggests it should say "Gulf of Mexico" in an area of the map closest to Mexico and "Gulf of America" in an area of the map closest to the US.

rbanffy

5 days ago

Most uses in other countries should see "Gulf of Fragile Masculinity" somewhere.

mapontosevenths

5 days ago

Incorrect. They are explicit that they use the 'common' name, specifically to avoid arbitrary changes by (despotic) rulers.

ActionHank

5 days ago

"everyone else sees both labels"

Just because the US has decided to smear faeces on their walls doesn't mean we all need to admire it.

hardbass

5 days ago

It sounds fucking stupid for this irrelevant name to be shown to non-American countries.

thrance

5 days ago

> As the publishers of a geographic reference tool, we believe that Google should not choose sides in international geopolitical disputes. For this reason, we've chosen to implement a uniform policy of Primary Local Usage.

Yeah, right, until a wannabe despot comes in and demands Google come lick its boots. In which case Google immediately complies with zero objection.

toyg

5 days ago

No, no, not "a" wannabe despot - specifically one from the United States and possibly Cina. You can be certain they would not care about the demands of, say, the president of Cuba.

lern_too_spel

4 days ago

They told China and Russia to take a hike, but their business in the US is so large that they gave in. Apple had so much business in China that it removed the TW flag emoji at China's request in a way that caused the font renderer to crash. https://www.wired.com/story/apple-china-censorship-bug-iphon...

Following local laws is not so bad. What's bad is when they politically support these despots after previously stating ideological opposition to similar despots in other countries. https://www.nytimes.com/2026/04/27/us/politics/sergey-brin-g...

paulvnickerson

5 days ago

Google is an American company. America's President asked the name be changed. Kinda stupid to accuse them of anything untoward.

brookst

5 days ago

Just following orders, eh?

paulvnickerson

5 days ago

Yes, this is exactly like the Holocaust

GaryBluto

4 days ago

First they came for the names of bodies of water…

brookst

3 days ago

That's really cheap.

The duty to disobey illegal orders is connected to the Holocaust but existed long before and applies to many other situations.

Just because a situation is not exactly the Holocaust DOES NOT mean that it's fine for people to abdicate personal responsibility by saying they're just following orders.

You do understand that right?

snayan

4 days ago

I don't think anyone is saying it's untoward, just sycophantic to keep entertaining the tantrums.

jordanb

5 days ago

Google lied and claimed the change came from the USGS when the USGS metadata hadn't changed.

There exists no mechanism in the US for the president to force a private company to change the name of anything.

They did this to curry favor with the regime. It is naked sycophancy that shows exactly where the leadership of this company stands.

wombat-man

4 days ago

It's in USGS now: https://www.usgs.gov/news/featured-story/directed-president-...

Idk what timeline you're looking at, but if they knew it was changing anyway, might as well.

Also, the President in many ways has a lot of control over all three branches of government. Do they really want to risk contracts because USGS hasn't technically been updated yet?

jordanb

4 days ago

Google claimed that they pull from USGS and they had no control of the name.

But the USGS database (GNIS) did not update when Google (and Apple) changed the name. Google's claim that they pulled from GNIS was untrue

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2026/08/google-maps-renames-...

wombat-man

4 days ago

Yes, I understand they changed it before GNIS, but it's updated now: https://edits.nationalmap.gov/apps/gaz-domestic/public/searc...

So again, it looks like they changed it to align to an upcoming change to official sources. They probably should not have claimed it was wholly dependent on USGS.

jordanb

4 days ago

Google lied when they said the pulled it from GNIS because they made the change manually at Trump's direction. They got caught lying because GNIS hadn't updated yet.

hardbass

5 days ago

American president can ask many things. Trump could ask an american citizen he wants to enter his property. The citizen can say "Fuck off you fucking moron" and slam the door in Trump's face since it is the citizen's personal property. So just saying the American president asked something doesn't necessarily mean you have to do that. If a citzen runs a map software, he is free to name that waterbody The Gulf of Orange Pedo if he wishes to, etc.

Maken

5 days ago

>American president can ask many things. Trump could ask an american citizen he wants to enter his property. The citizen can say "Fuck off you fucking moron" and slam the door in Trump's face since it is the citizen's personal property.

I'm sure that's not how it would go.

hardbass

4 days ago

With a normal President that's how it will go. To this one the law is irrelevant, you need to have some good firepower in your home of course.

whoanoway

5 days ago

You will discover, as I have discovered, that it's not so easy to sever ties with people you dislike. Prepare yourself for a life of forced entanglement with some of the dumbest, most reckless people in society. They'll worm their way back into your lives, just to punish you.

arjie

4 days ago

For corporations in a country to be subject to and follow the rules promulgated by the elected authorities of that country is normal and just. To 'capitulate' or 'not resist' the President of the United States is fine. I cannot be bothered by this. In this case, it seems a natural extension of the non-English policy to a world where the Anglophone nations are in conflict on naming:

> For language clients other than English, we display only the preferred name in the relevant language. For example, the Japanese client of Google Earth shows "Sea of Japan" in Japanese (日本海), while the Korean version shows "East Sea" in Korean (동해).

klrefg

4 days ago

> subject to and follow the rules promulgated by the elected authorities of that country is normal and just

There are no laws or rules which require Google or any other private entity to use whatever names Trump came up with. That’s just not how it works

user

4 days ago

[deleted]