You would be naive to expect anything else. Corporations only exist to make profit. They will never take an action that risks that.
Some people, for some inexplicable reason, believe that companies like Google who often voice support for left wing politics do that for any other reason than that it's profitable.
Google relies on (corrupt) collaboration with the US government so they will never disobey their orders to parrot your political beliefs.
It's honestly shocking how many people have already separated companies from the people that run them. "It's okay that they did evil, they had to! It's for profit!"
Take a step out of the cave and look around, it's all people. There is no such thing as a soulless automaton, it may just be a machine but there is a person pushing its buttons, there is a man behind the curtain, and you should pay attention to him or whatever the equivalent psychological parable is that works for you.
I believe in the trickle down theory of blame for corporate malfeasance. Starting with the CEOs and VPs and C-level executives and working down until the cancer is removed is, in my opinion, the only way to cure the issue.
> Corporations only exist to make profit. They will never take an action that risks that.
This is absolutely 100% an action (one among many over the years) that guarantees I (for one) will never give Google another thin dime of my money for any reason if there's any way I can avoid it. Permanently lost profit from at least this one user (who was at one time in the past a huge Google fanboi)...
This is completely legitimate and of enough people do as you do, Google will act. But clearly there's not enough people like that. Always vote with your wallet.
I was also a fanboy once, but a straw broke that particular camel's back a long time ago. I already wasn't planning on ever giving Google any money, so they're not losing any income from me.
> I was also a fanboy once, but a straw broke that particular camel's back a long time ago.
That "straw" for me was when they decided that "Don't be Evil" actually meant "be as evil as we can every chance we get"... Every evil action they've taken since then just makes me just that much more certain that I want to actively avoid Google products as much as I possibly can for the rest of my life.
The title of this article implies they changed it before being forced/asked. As stupid as the whole thing is, the executive order was signed. This article is just about how the government’s own maps aren’t updated yet.
This wasn’t a case of Google updating based on a mere suggestion or guessing at what our mad king wants. It’s still silly, it’s still petty, but this article reads (and is titled) like clickbait to me. Instead we should focus on the absurdity of the EO.
Interestingly, Executive Order 12770, signed in 1991 by President George H.W. Bush, established the metric system as the official system of measurement in the USA.
Google still defaults to miles for some reason.
I get that these cases have their differences, but I think it’s reasonably thought provoking and worth at least a single moment of attention if we’re already on the topic.
Not really. Metric Conversion Act Of 1975 would be a better reference, but it didn’t go that far, only saying that Metric is preferred, and the choice is voluntary.
The EO you referenced is about what units the federal government uses, not setting an official system of measurement for the entire US.
That's exactly what every executive order is: it's what the federal government uses. It's not binding for anyone else. It doesn't have the power of law. Google is under absolutely no obligation to do this. They do it explicitly to appease Trump.
The EO changes the official name of the geographical feature as recognized by the US government.
All the large map providers ingest a data feed from the USG (and other governments for other localizations) which names various geographical and place entities. That data goes through a pipeline (basically a CI pipeline) to build the map artifact and tiles served to users.
Google just has a particularly good and low latency pipeline. Google got there in a couple days. Apple will get there in a week or two. The USGS will get there in god-knows-when. Mapquest has said they’re not going to update the name, which presumably means their pipeline is old and creaky.
The article itself even acknowledges that the USGS GNIS database has already been updated to reflect the change. Unless someone at Google manually edits the entity, it will be automatically renamed with no human input (although, for very large, highly visible entities the validation stage may block the build and flag it for manual review)
It's an executive order, not a law. There is absolutely no reason for Google, MapQuest or anyone else to change the name of the lake in their map. Google chooses to do so, MapQuest chooses not to. That says nothing about the speed of their pipeline, and everything about their desire to appease the government.
Your own response isn't even internally consistent.
> The USGS will get there in god-knows-when.
> The article itself even acknowledges that the USGS GNIS database has already been updated to reflect the change.
Yes, both USGS and the Department of the Interior's executive leadership have been replaced by this Administration with Trump lackeys who fell over themselves to boast in a memo just how quickly they'd made the change.
> Mapquest has said they’re not going to update the name, which presumably means their pipeline is old and creaky.
it's actually the same thing - T's EO only governs how the Fed Gov references Lake Ontario on its maps; it doesn't force private companies to use the name (it has no authority to do so)
Because when the orange one is gone, people will remember what a supremely supine bastard you were, and now you're no longer protected, will punish you hard.
If people have largely forgotten or forgiven Nazi sympathizing companies, what makes you think they’ll remember and boycott companies who renamed a map?
When it’s renamed back they will likely rename it just as quickly again. Their job is to provide a map with the correct names based on whatever governments name places… not to make passive aggressive political statements of omission.
Well no, it's not. Their job is to provide a useful map. Maps which name things as most people call them are accurate and useful.
Maps which rename things for political causes are not useful to the users of the maps. In the same way, newspapers which report what governments tell them to report, rather than reporting what is true, are not useful to their readers. Readers don't want propaganda rags, especially if they know they're wrong.
Don't get me wrong, most countries have a way that involves their own citizens in naming processes, and a renaming can happen if enough people in the area think the name has to change. That then feeds into gazetteers, GIS and so on. But don't confuse "government facilitates agreement among citizens to change their place names", which it does, with "government has the authority to tell people what something's called", which it doesn't.
You sound like a bootlicker, so tell me, what would happen if the orange one dictated that the state of New York is now "Shitty McShitland"? Will you be calling it that? Should people who live there call it that? If the orange one dictates your name is now "Shitty McShitface", will you call yourself that?
When he's gone we can just undo it as easily as he did it. And tear down all of his other tributes to himself.
If we don't want idiots to do idiotic things we probably shouldn't make it possible/legal in the first place. But the corruption and malfeasance goes way beyond Trump so here we are.
Are you sure about that? People mildly criticised Charlie Kirk after his death and lost their jobs, there's a whole outrage over renaming streets and tearing down monuments to confederates and racists. Those same people are going to be predictably upset by any attempt to undo the man's "legacy" once he kicks the bucket.
What we actually need to do are things like ranked pairs voting, a recall election dynamic for president/congress/judges, constitutional amendment to enshrine splitting executive power into agencies with heads elected separately from the president, get rid of the electoral college, take out the supplicating trash from the Supreme Council, criminal trials and unjust enrichment clawbacks, and so on. The whole point of the names are to be stupid petty distractions, don't let yourself be distracted.
Trump is irrelevant. What really matters was done by Project 2025, that will not be undone anytime soon, that is if democrats can even gain federal power again due to election interference or whatever they will do with ICE if they lose an election again.
My concern is that the orange one and his tribe may never leave at this point. The voters seem totally immune to reflection and the party has accumulated so much power, festered so much rot, and replaced so many government officials it feels like no election will ever be fair again. Even if one is, the pendulum will just swing right back to them the next election.
And SCOTUS is compromised. They're letting them redistrict based on political party to dilute opposition. They're allowing Trump to politicize the post office to potentially delay mail in ballots so they won't be counted. They're allowing Republicans to mass revoke voter registrations and sell that data.
And now ICE, Trump's personal, unaccountable Gestapo in training, is getting access to voter roles. What will they possibly use that for if not to influence the voting process?
It's a good thing SCOTUS ruled that POTUS is entirely immune to all consequences and can pardon himself. I'm sure that won't empower a coup.
If you express something, it should have a constructive purpose. Sheerly reactive curses rarely fit in that.
Edit:
Again, repeating what already written here: The disagreeing part better formulate an argument. This post is consistent with the message: because again, silent disagreement is very much not constructive.
> If you express something, it should have a constructive purpose.
I feel like trying to make any expression constructive is one of those 'nice in theory' but also 'not a thing that has ever or will ever be done by any human being, because it's an insane inhumane thing to practice' ideals.
You cannot make every expression of opinion constructive. Take the case of this post. There is no need for constructive criticism or expression here, because the people doing this are not doing it out of good will. It then follows that any use of energy to provide that constructive expression is an unnecessary waste of goodwill.
But "whatever your local country calls it" isn't always clear! There are plenty of places where the official name differs from the commonly-used name.
For example, in The Netherlands the official name for The Hague is 's-Gravenhage - but in practice virtually everyone calls it Den Haag, including the government itself. But it won't be on any official document like a passport. Similarly 's-Hertogenbosch is also very often abbreviated to Den Bosch, and calling it by its full name in casual conversation would sound quite pompous.
So what to do? Use the official name everywhere? Use the name people use in practice everywhere? Google Maps went with the colloquial name for Den Haag and the official name for 's-Hertogenbosch, so clearly there is no one-size-fits-all policy being applied.
The same applies to the current renaming. Sure, Trump and a handful of diehard cultists will call it "Lake America", but the US population as a whole is undoubtedly going to stick with the Lake Ontario they know and love for the foreseeable future.
So does Google Maps follow what the country calls it, or what the president calls it?
I've been keeping an eye on the USGS "Recent Earthquakes" web-based app (it has a PWA as well) and reloading it once a day or so. But even though I heard the USGS mention rapidly updating the name, perhaps on X, the "Recent Earthquakes" map is still indicating Lake Ontario as of right now.
Users on the Kagi forum are reporting mixed results. Some US users still see Lake Ontario, some Canadian users see Lake America. They also seem to agree that it should be classified as incorrect behavior.
As of this morning I started seeing new results. Now, a search for "Lake Ontario" returns both names.
As a Kagi customer, I find this was just about the worst way to handle it. I pay for a search engine because I want searches to cater to MY need for accurate and unbiased information. If a search engine can decide that someone else' political expedience is more important, there's a fundamental problem.
In case it was remotely in doubt, Kagi just demonstrated that they have the ability to change the labels that Mapbox gives them. It's fine if there was some implementation glitch if it comes with an explanation.
Currently I'm watching Kagi silently change results. If they're doing it for Lake Ontario, how can I be confident they aren't doing it with other search results?
I'm so tired of this revisionist history bullshit. Trump isnt doing this because its good for anyone except himself and his band of bullies who's only goal is to overthrow anything democratic and instill a lifetime fascist leader.
You can make too much of this. Countries regularly have different names for foreign or shared places. The "English Channel" is "La Manche", Cologne is Köln. Like the English language, it's pretty much down to "that's what I call it". If people continue to call it "Lake Ontario" that's what it will be.
It's a country's leader petulantly ordering their entire country to call a lake by a new name that wrongly implies it belongs to them, which it doesn't, in order to spite their main trading partner because they rejected a trade deal that would massively harm them.
Going through those, it looks as if only about 50% stuck, mostly from World War II, so here's hoping. I'm not sure if using the name is in any way enforced?
That is not the point. Are you trying to minimize the phenomenon and cause and root? The point is, the actions taken by the appointed, what they reveal, the reactions from other parts, what they reveal, what will come next.
The disagreeing part better formulate an argument.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anticipatory_obedience
Disgusting. At the very least drag your feet a bit.
Just goes to show how on board those corporations are with this sort of narcissistic authoritarianismm
You would be naive to expect anything else. Corporations only exist to make profit. They will never take an action that risks that.
Some people, for some inexplicable reason, believe that companies like Google who often voice support for left wing politics do that for any other reason than that it's profitable.
Google relies on (corrupt) collaboration with the US government so they will never disobey their orders to parrot your political beliefs.
That doesn't make it any less disgusting, though.
And there are also companies that aren't quite so eager to comply.
It's honestly shocking how many people have already separated companies from the people that run them. "It's okay that they did evil, they had to! It's for profit!"
Take a step out of the cave and look around, it's all people. There is no such thing as a soulless automaton, it may just be a machine but there is a person pushing its buttons, there is a man behind the curtain, and you should pay attention to him or whatever the equivalent psychological parable is that works for you.
That's true. And that's exactly why we should blame Google's employees - they are the ones to blame for what's happening.
I believe in the trickle down theory of blame for corporate malfeasance. Starting with the CEOs and VPs and C-level executives and working down until the cancer is removed is, in my opinion, the only way to cure the issue.
> Corporations only exist to make profit. They will never take an action that risks that.
This is absolutely 100% an action (one among many over the years) that guarantees I (for one) will never give Google another thin dime of my money for any reason if there's any way I can avoid it. Permanently lost profit from at least this one user (who was at one time in the past a huge Google fanboi)...
This is completely legitimate and of enough people do as you do, Google will act. But clearly there's not enough people like that. Always vote with your wallet.
I was also a fanboy once, but a straw broke that particular camel's back a long time ago. I already wasn't planning on ever giving Google any money, so they're not losing any income from me.
> I was also a fanboy once, but a straw broke that particular camel's back a long time ago.
That "straw" for me was when they decided that "Don't be Evil" actually meant "be as evil as we can every chance we get"... Every evil action they've taken since then just makes me just that much more certain that I want to actively avoid Google products as much as I possibly can for the rest of my life.
Apt.
The title of this article implies they changed it before being forced/asked. As stupid as the whole thing is, the executive order was signed. This article is just about how the government’s own maps aren’t updated yet.
This wasn’t a case of Google updating based on a mere suggestion or guessing at what our mad king wants. It’s still silly, it’s still petty, but this article reads (and is titled) like clickbait to me. Instead we should focus on the absurdity of the EO.
Google isn't part of the government - they can put whatever names they like on Google Maps.
MapQuest has chosen to stick with "Lake Ontario", just as they did with "Gulf of Mexico", and are seeing app downloads surge as a result.
Interestingly, Executive Order 12770, signed in 1991 by President George H.W. Bush, established the metric system as the official system of measurement in the USA.
Google still defaults to miles for some reason.
I get that these cases have their differences, but I think it’s reasonably thought provoking and worth at least a single moment of attention if we’re already on the topic.
Not really. Metric Conversion Act Of 1975 would be a better reference, but it didn’t go that far, only saying that Metric is preferred, and the choice is voluntary.
The EO you referenced is about what units the federal government uses, not setting an official system of measurement for the entire US.
That's exactly what every executive order is: it's what the federal government uses. It's not binding for anyone else. It doesn't have the power of law. Google is under absolutely no obligation to do this. They do it explicitly to appease Trump.
> They do it explicitly to appease Trump
Well, actually, no.
The EO changes the official name of the geographical feature as recognized by the US government.
All the large map providers ingest a data feed from the USG (and other governments for other localizations) which names various geographical and place entities. That data goes through a pipeline (basically a CI pipeline) to build the map artifact and tiles served to users.
Google just has a particularly good and low latency pipeline. Google got there in a couple days. Apple will get there in a week or two. The USGS will get there in god-knows-when. Mapquest has said they’re not going to update the name, which presumably means their pipeline is old and creaky.
The article itself even acknowledges that the USGS GNIS database has already been updated to reflect the change. Unless someone at Google manually edits the entity, it will be automatically renamed with no human input (although, for very large, highly visible entities the validation stage may block the build and flag it for manual review)
It's an executive order, not a law. There is absolutely no reason for Google, MapQuest or anyone else to change the name of the lake in their map. Google chooses to do so, MapQuest chooses not to. That says nothing about the speed of their pipeline, and everything about their desire to appease the government.
Your own response isn't even internally consistent.
> The USGS will get there in god-knows-when.
> The article itself even acknowledges that the USGS GNIS database has already been updated to reflect the change.
Yes, both USGS and the Department of the Interior's executive leadership have been replaced by this Administration with Trump lackeys who fell over themselves to boast in a memo just how quickly they'd made the change.
> Mapquest has said they’re not going to update the name, which presumably means their pipeline is old and creaky.
No, it means no such thing.
it's actually the same thing - T's EO only governs how the Fed Gov references Lake Ontario on its maps; it doesn't force private companies to use the name (it has no authority to do so)
Google isn't a branch of the government, they can call the lake whatever they want.
It's a decision to comply that quickly and cravenly, presumably because Trump is vindictive, why die on this hill.
> why die on this hill
Because when the orange one is gone, people will remember what a supremely supine bastard you were, and now you're no longer protected, will punish you hard.
It feels good to model the future that way, but seems incredibly unlikely there will be consequences for those people.
Yeah, well, Google under Sundar hasn't exactly been full of bold stances.
Sundar is baby sitting Larry and Sergey's money.
[dead]
If people have largely forgotten or forgiven Nazi sympathizing companies, what makes you think they’ll remember and boycott companies who renamed a map?
When it’s renamed back they will likely rename it just as quickly again. Their job is to provide a map with the correct names based on whatever governments name places… not to make passive aggressive political statements of omission.
Well no, it's not. Their job is to provide a useful map. Maps which name things as most people call them are accurate and useful.
Maps which rename things for political causes are not useful to the users of the maps. In the same way, newspapers which report what governments tell them to report, rather than reporting what is true, are not useful to their readers. Readers don't want propaganda rags, especially if they know they're wrong.
Don't get me wrong, most countries have a way that involves their own citizens in naming processes, and a renaming can happen if enough people in the area think the name has to change. That then feeds into gazetteers, GIS and so on. But don't confuse "government facilitates agreement among citizens to change their place names", which it does, with "government has the authority to tell people what something's called", which it doesn't.
You sound like a bootlicker, so tell me, what would happen if the orange one dictated that the state of New York is now "Shitty McShitland"? Will you be calling it that? Should people who live there call it that? If the orange one dictates your name is now "Shitty McShitface", will you call yourself that?
[dead]
When he's gone we can just undo it as easily as he did it. And tear down all of his other tributes to himself.
If we don't want idiots to do idiotic things we probably shouldn't make it possible/legal in the first place. But the corruption and malfeasance goes way beyond Trump so here we are.
Are you sure about that? People mildly criticised Charlie Kirk after his death and lost their jobs, there's a whole outrage over renaming streets and tearing down monuments to confederates and racists. Those same people are going to be predictably upset by any attempt to undo the man's "legacy" once he kicks the bucket.
What we actually need to do are things like ranked pairs voting, a recall election dynamic for president/congress/judges, constitutional amendment to enshrine splitting executive power into agencies with heads elected separately from the president, get rid of the electoral college, take out the supplicating trash from the Supreme Council, criminal trials and unjust enrichment clawbacks, and so on. The whole point of the names are to be stupid petty distractions, don't let yourself be distracted.
Trump is irrelevant. What really matters was done by Project 2025, that will not be undone anytime soon, that is if democrats can even gain federal power again due to election interference or whatever they will do with ICE if they lose an election again.
My concern is that the orange one and his tribe may never leave at this point. The voters seem totally immune to reflection and the party has accumulated so much power, festered so much rot, and replaced so many government officials it feels like no election will ever be fair again. Even if one is, the pendulum will just swing right back to them the next election.
And SCOTUS is compromised. They're letting them redistrict based on political party to dilute opposition. They're allowing Trump to politicize the post office to potentially delay mail in ballots so they won't be counted. They're allowing Republicans to mass revoke voter registrations and sell that data.
And now ICE, Trump's personal, unaccountable Gestapo in training, is getting access to voter roles. What will they possibly use that for if not to influence the voting process?
It's a good thing SCOTUS ruled that POTUS is entirely immune to all consequences and can pardon himself. I'm sure that won't empower a coup.
What I want to call this administration is unfortunately against the site rules
> What I want to call
If you express something, it should have a constructive purpose. Sheerly reactive curses rarely fit in that.
Edit:
Again, repeating what already written here: The disagreeing part better formulate an argument. This post is consistent with the message: because again, silent disagreement is very much not constructive.
> If you express something, it should have a constructive purpose.
I feel like trying to make any expression constructive is one of those 'nice in theory' but also 'not a thing that has ever or will ever be done by any human being, because it's an insane inhumane thing to practice' ideals.
You cannot make every expression of opinion constructive. Take the case of this post. There is no need for constructive criticism or expression here, because the people doing this are not doing it out of good will. It then follows that any use of energy to provide that constructive expression is an unnecessary waste of goodwill.
> by any human being
What do you think this very writer is, a demiGod?
> any use of energy to provide that constructive expression is
A duty.
> not doing it out of good will
That subset is just noise, we go on with the debate.
Unfortunately half of voters have no interest in engaging in meaningful discourse and think angels are real and climate change is a hoax.
Be reminded, young man, that very probably you yourself have little titles to judge those matters.
And your point does not exempt anyone from constructiveness.
fun?
There's clearly a line running through the lake. It should only change name on the lower part.
Didn't google do the same to Persian Gulf too? they please whoever's feeding them
They just do whatever your local country calls it. The name changes based on where you are.
But "whatever your local country calls it" isn't always clear! There are plenty of places where the official name differs from the commonly-used name.
For example, in The Netherlands the official name for The Hague is 's-Gravenhage - but in practice virtually everyone calls it Den Haag, including the government itself. But it won't be on any official document like a passport. Similarly 's-Hertogenbosch is also very often abbreviated to Den Bosch, and calling it by its full name in casual conversation would sound quite pompous.
So what to do? Use the official name everywhere? Use the name people use in practice everywhere? Google Maps went with the colloquial name for Den Haag and the official name for 's-Hertogenbosch, so clearly there is no one-size-fits-all policy being applied.
The same applies to the current renaming. Sure, Trump and a handful of diehard cultists will call it "Lake America", but the US population as a whole is undoubtedly going to stick with the Lake Ontario they know and love for the foreseeable future.
So does Google Maps follow what the country calls it, or what the president calls it?
I've been keeping an eye on the USGS "Recent Earthquakes" web-based app (it has a PWA as well) and reloading it once a day or so. But even though I heard the USGS mention rapidly updating the name, perhaps on X, the "Recent Earthquakes" map is still indicating Lake Ontario as of right now.
https://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/map/?extent=42.09007...
Kagi Maps did too.
On my end it still says "Lake Ontario" on Kagi Maps (I am outside of the US though).
And if it's showing up as "Lake America" inside of the US on Kagi Maps, it's most likely because of Mapbox, and not Kagi.
Users on the Kagi forum are reporting mixed results. Some US users still see Lake Ontario, some Canadian users see Lake America. They also seem to agree that it should be classified as incorrect behavior.
https://kagifeedback.org/d/11381-lake-ontario-showing-up-wit...
As of this morning I started seeing new results. Now, a search for "Lake Ontario" returns both names.
As a Kagi customer, I find this was just about the worst way to handle it. I pay for a search engine because I want searches to cater to MY need for accurate and unbiased information. If a search engine can decide that someone else' political expedience is more important, there's a fundamental problem.
In case it was remotely in doubt, Kagi just demonstrated that they have the ability to change the labels that Mapbox gives them. It's fine if there was some implementation glitch if it comes with an explanation.
Currently I'm watching Kagi silently change results. If they're doing it for Lake Ontario, how can I be confident they aren't doing it with other search results?
still shows Lake Ontario for me (in the US)
not even Fantozzi with the "Mega Direttore Galattico Gran Mascalzon Figl di Putt"
[dupe] Discussion on source: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49495947
[flagged]
I'm so tired of this revisionist history bullshit. Trump isnt doing this because its good for anyone except himself and his band of bullies who's only goal is to overthrow anything democratic and instill a lifetime fascist leader.
What part of my statement was revisionist history or untrue?
Is anyone else able to find "executive seal b ible" on YouTube? With similar queries?
The one with the modified executive seal on it?
It's unfathomable to me that there are no videos on YouTube that show their modified seal for private profit on b ibles and b eer pong sets.
You can make too much of this. Countries regularly have different names for foreign or shared places. The "English Channel" is "La Manche", Cologne is Köln. Like the English language, it's pretty much down to "that's what I call it". If people continue to call it "Lake Ontario" that's what it will be.
It's a country's leader petulantly ordering their entire country to call a lake by a new name that wrongly implies it belongs to them, which it doesn't, in order to spite their main trading partner because they rejected a trade deal that would massively harm them.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_politically_motivated_...
Thanks for the link.
Going through those, it looks as if only about 50% stuck, mostly from World War II, so here's hoping. I'm not sure if using the name is in any way enforced?
[dead]
That is not the point. Are you trying to minimize the phenomenon and cause and root? The point is, the actions taken by the appointed, what they reveal, the reactions from other parts, what they reveal, what will come next.
The disagreeing part better formulate an argument.
If the snipers had the notion that what they do is accruing contempt.