• @ramjambamalam@lemmy.ca
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    253 months ago

    The change reflects Google’s policy of adhering to official government names for geographical locations.

    OK, so why am I seeing Gulf of Mexico (Gulf of America) from Canada?

    • @Tattorack@lemmy.world
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      163 months ago

      Same here in Europe.

      This is highly irregular for several reasons:

      Google adheres to official government positions, yes, but as far as I’m aware the American government hasn’t made the name change official yet. Members of the government have said that they’d do this, but I don’t think this idea has passed any process yet. So then why is Google “updated” their maps?

      When Google adheres to official government positions, they are local. In example, when you’re in China and look up Taiwan, it’ll appear as part of China. In other countries it’ll appear as either an independent country or a disputed territory, depending on that government’s official position on the matter. What we DON’T see is something like “Taiwan (China)”, as Google supposedly has no intention on forcing the policies of one government upon another government, and as far as I’m aware the rest of the world hasn’t agreed to changing The Gulf of Mexico to The Gulf of America.