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.

  • @DozensOfDonner@mander.xyz
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    07 months ago

    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.

  • @Embargo@lemm.ee
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    07 months ago

    Less threatening… More doing.

    The U.S. dictatorship are just doing and they’re slowly tearing apart OUR planet.

    • @cotlovan@lemm.ee
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      07 months ago

      Bro, are you ok? “US dictayorship”? Trump was elected by the majority of Americans. How is Trump destroying YOUR planet? By changing the name of the gulf? Is this the biggest problem “your” planet has?

      Fukin soypeople…

      • @Embargo@lemm.ee
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        07 months ago

        Oh yeah, I forgot. Implying people enjoy soy is an insult. Ouch! My feelings.

        I never said Dictayorship. Because that’s terrible spelling of the only word you needed to spell correctly to actually criticise me. I also never linked the mislabeling of the Gulf as destroying the planet. He is though…

        He proclaimed that he will “OWN” Gaza through means of literal ethnic cleansing. He’s conspiring with Putin to help finalise his invasion of eastern Ukraine. He’s currently purging the Government of minorities and people he deems unloyal. Elon Musk is infiltrating and tearing up government departments as an unelected right-hand entity. His right-wing army are, by algorithm, shifting the western world easily into fascism. I could go on but I’m done with you.

        Bottom line… pay attention.

        Also… the fact that you put forward Trump was elected by majority of Americans is a straight out lie. Grow up.

        • @cotlovan@lemm.ee
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          07 months ago

          Oh, I mistyped a word, while writing on my phone. That means I’m wrong, who did I miss that?!

          Its also funny how you say Trump “is infiltrating and tearing down government departments”. Bro, he’s the president, everything he’s doing it’s in his powers. Did the previous president also “infiltrate” the government departments?

          He’s “purging” the DEI hires, the people who are there just because of their skin color or sexual preferences, did you forget how the former white house speaker was “the first gay black woman”? That’s the only thing that recomended her.

          I’m really curious how Trump being elected by the majority of the Americans is a lie, please enlighten me.

        • @cotlovan@lemm.ee
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          07 months ago

          Trump said on the “day one” he referred to, he would use his presidential powers to close the southern border with Mexico

          That’s from article you linked. Maybe read the content of the articles you link to, not just the headlines.

          • Flying Squid
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            07 months ago

            I read it. How does that mean he didn’t literally say he would be a dictator if elected? That was one of the examples he gave of how he would be a dictator.

            • @cotlovan@lemm.ee
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              07 months ago

              He said “for one day, in order to secure the border with Mexico”. Let’s completely ignore that and run with the headline that supports your view, right?

              • Flying Squid
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                07 months ago

                I did the exact opposite of completely ignoring it. I literally said, “that was one of the examples he gave of how he would be a dictator.”

                Weird to accuse me of ignoring something I addressed directly. I’m not sure what you hoped to achieve.

                • @cotlovan@lemm.ee
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                  07 months ago

                  Dude, you are taking words out of context, you aren’t addressing anything. You read the word “dictator”, saw red in front of your eyes and ran with it.

  • magnetosphere
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    07 months ago

    Don’t “threaten”. Any asshole can make a threat. GO AHEAD AND DO IT.

    • @Kalysta@lemm.ee
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      07 months ago

      It looks like they’re giving the lawyers time to find legal arguments to file.

      Though they could jusr ban Google from their country.

    • @Shardikprime@lemmy.world
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      07 months ago

      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.

    • wanderingmagus
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      07 months ago

      And for the love of god do not switch over to another American company, or any company, go FOSS and decentralized

  • @Slovene@feddit.nl
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    7 months ago

    Come on, guys. You have drug cartels. Surely they have a guy named Luigi. Doesn’t Trump want to declare war on Mexico or some insane shit like that?

  • @TypicalHog@lemm.ee
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    07 months ago

    But it kinda makes sense to be called Gulf of America since it’s located in North America.

    • Lukas Murch
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      07 months ago

      My phone is a Pixel on Google Fi, and I have a YouTube premium account. I’ve got a lot of work ahead of me :( lol

    • @AJ1@lemmy.ca
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      07 months ago

      it really sucks when you realise that virtually everything is a US company… and yet everything they sell is made in fucking China

    • @viking@infosec.pub
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      07 months ago

      Nah. I’ll start boycotting google when there are useful alternatives. Amazon, facebook, reddit - no problem.

      Google search - fine, I can get by with DDG or Yandex. Gmail - sure, whatever. Maps? Organic Maps (and other openstreetmaps front-ends) works alright for getting your bearings, but it’s a far cry from useful for finding businesses, and terrible for navigation. Waze used to be the only viable alternative, but ever since Google bought them, it’s hard to justify a full boycott without massively inconveniencing myself.

      Same for meta as a whole. Facebook and Instagram, sure, no need. But living without whatsapp is simply impossible in some countries, where it’s the de-facto standard for communication, and even used as the only means of contact with government agencies.

      • @TWB0109@lemmy.one
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        07 months ago

        Fr, I try, but it’s really not possible to get away from these companies.

        Nobody wants signal, nobody wants mastodon, nobody wants or frankly can use openstreetmaps. Alternatives are just not good enough

        • Victor
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          07 months ago

          Alternatives are just not good enough

          And to no fault of their own of course. They just aren’t working with the same resources as Google and the others.

          I think it’s more a question of stepping down our level of comfort at this point. Can we live without a particular service that Google provides, when there are no alternatives with feature parity? Or can we live with the fact that some of the features aren’t working as well or missing, and use the alternatives anyway?

          • @TWB0109@lemmy.one
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            07 months ago

            Yeah, I still find it impressive how good mastodon and lemmy are given the limitations.

            For sure, and that is possible for personal things, but for social things it’s almost impossible to live without some features.

            People don’t want to step down their level of comfort when it comes to WhatsApp (where I live people don’t use SMS because they’re limited), so you’re forced to either keep your contacts (which includes family) or move to signal/threema/session/matrix/etc. But have no one to talk to

          • @nossaquesapao@lemmy.eco.br
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            7 months ago

            Exactly. If there were perfectly interchangeable alternatives, there would have been a true competition and those companies wouldn’t be holding the amount of power they do today in the first place.

            Moving to alternatives requires some degree of effort and giving up on some microconforts. There’s no other way. There’s no fight without any pain. If we want to fight those companies, we must sacrifice those micro conforts, even if that means reducing tech use as a whole and doing a few things the “old fashioned” way.

        • @viking@infosec.pub
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          07 months ago

          To an extent. Lemmy is a useful substitute for reddit because it’s anonymous, so I don’t know and to an extent don’t care who I’m talking to. With messenger services it’s a different use case, I need the exact people I want to talk to on there, or it’s essentially worthless.

      • @aeshna_cyanea@lemm.ee
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        7 months ago

        If you disapprove of internet companies caving to authoritarian politics, I have bad news for you about Yandex

  • @raef@lemmy.world
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    07 months ago

    It’s stupid, but it’s not that extreme. Countries have different names for things. For example, Germany calls the Baltic Sea “Ostsee” (lit. east sea) and Lake Constance 'Bodensee" (lit. bottom sea) but those things are only at the bottom and east for Germany.

    • Flying Squid
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      07 months ago

      China calls Taiwan “Chinese Taipei.” Should Google Maps show “Taiwan (Chinese Taipei)” on maps? Because I don’t see how that would be China’s call any more than the name of the Gulf would be Trump’s call.

      • @raef@lemmy.world
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        07 months ago

        Is there Google maps in China? If there is, I’d be surprised if it didn’t say that. That is claiming ownership. Countries can’t own a gulf beyond the domestic waters convention. But, I don’t know, that’s a good question because a regular Chinese person would just be confused. It wouldn’t effect any policy change

        • Flying Squid
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          07 months ago

          I did not say in China. Google Maps says “Gulf of Mexico (Gulf of America)” in most of the world. It sure is here in Britain.

          Also, calling the Gulf of Mexico the Gulf of America is a clear claim of ownership.

          • @raef@lemmy.world
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            07 months ago

            Mexico didn’t own it before any more than the US owns it now. I don’t like the nationalistic intentions, but I can rationalize it to myself that Mexico is also part of [North] America

            • Flying Squid
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              7 months ago

              No shit they didn’t. And they never have. Because it was called the Gulf of Mexico before Mexico as a nation existed. It was called that because it was named after the Valley of Mexico, which was part of New Spain at the time the Gulf was named. Mexico as a country didn’t exist until centuries later.

              Maybe actually read the history of this before deciding this is about anyone other than Trump claiming ownership of that gulf.

              • @raef@lemmy.world
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                07 months ago

                No one can own the Gulf anyway. Trump just wanted to stir shit up and people like you getting all bent out of shape are just playing into it. It’s just a name

                • Flying Squid
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                  07 months ago

                  “Mount McKinley” is “just a name” for what is supposed to be called Denali. Ask an indigenous person if they think changing the name of a sacred mountain to the name of a man responsible for one of them many genocides of their people is “just a name.”

                  Then ask virtually any black person if they don’t care about Trump and Republicans restoring Confederate generals’ names to military bases. Find out if they think it’s “just a name.”

                  Names have power and I’m amazed you don’t realize that.

  • bitwolf
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    07 months ago

    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.

  • @madcaesar@lemmy.world
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    07 months ago

    Republicans are so good at baiting liberals into useless bullshit arguments, while they plunder stuff that actually matters.

  • keropoktasen
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    07 months ago

    Well, the continent was named America, not the US continent. So the name Gulf of America just sounds right.

    • Guy Ingonito
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      07 months ago

      Following your logic Lake Michigan should be renamed Lake America. There’s a bunch of lakes up there, do they all get renamed Lake of America? Seems confusing!

      Here’s a list of all the gulfs in the Americas:

      North America

      1. Gulf of Mexico
      2. Gulf of Alaska
      3. Gulf of California (Sea of Cortes)
      4. Gulf of St. Lawrence
      5. Gulf of Honduras
      6. Gulf of Panama
      7. Gulf of Tehuantepec

      Central and South America

      1. Gulf of Darien (Colombia and Panama)
      2. Gulf of Venezuela
      3. Gulf of Guayaquil (Ecuador)

      Following your logic, they’re all badly named because that’s just named after the region they’re in, not the content.