• hulfpa@lemmy.mlEnglish
    1421·
    12 days ago

    This move makes zero sense to me. Why, change it? It’s not it’s official name or international recognized name so wtf

      • iAmTheTot@sh.itjust.works
        30·
        11 days ago

        To be clear, they’ve changed names in line with official government policy before, not just for Trump’s admin.

        • John Richard@lemmy.worldEnglish
          1015·
          11 days ago

          Yeah but that makes too much sense for emotional & reactional people that don’t rely on logic

          • VeryVito@lemmy.ml
            4·
            11 days ago

            I get what you’re saying, but the renaming itself is entirely an act of emotion and reaction, with no trace of logic, too. It’s pretty much all we should expect to see from anyone for a while.

          • Kalysta@lemm.ee
            21·
            10 days ago

            They are a private organization with the right to say “lol that’s nice”, and leave it as the gulf of mexico. Executive orders direct government policy.

      • hulfpa@lemmy.mlEnglish
        11·
        11 days ago

        If something as ridiculous currys favor and infkuence with Trump the USA is truly coming to an end.

        • samus12345@lemm.eeEnglish
          4·
          11 days ago

          It’s not coming to an end as in no longer existing, but it absolutely is as a world power. Maybe it will be for the better in the long run.

    • Steve Dice@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
      65·
      11 days ago

      The USA is now part of a list of “sensitive countries” with authoritarian states with their own version of reality. When users in one of the countries on this list visit Google sites, they see that government’s version of reality. This is nothing new. Google does it all the time with disputed territories. It’s only news because it’s the first time the US has an authoritarian government.

      Here’s how it looks when visiting from a Mexican device with the language set to Australian English while located in Hungary.

      1000019054

      Edit: undoxxed myself lol

    • pelespirit@sh.itjust.works
      38·
      11 days ago

      Distraction from:

      • closing down the Consumer Protection Agency, USAID, and the Education Agency
      • cutting off funding to the universities
      • stealing our student, treasury and health records while taking over the purse
      • not following federal judge’s orders
      • building an unregulated concentration camp in Cuba
      • etc.

      Edit: That’s why trump did it. All tech companies are in his hands now.

      • Mirshe@lemmy.world
        14·
        11 days ago

        No, there are no smokescreens. Trump is literally this stupid. Don’t attribute to maliciousness what can be attributed to narcissism.

        • pelespirit@sh.itjust.works
          6·
          11 days ago

          Thank you for giving me the opportunity to post this somewhere else:

          “The opposition party is the media,” Steve Bannon, who helped run Trump’s 2016 campaign, told PBS Frontline five years ago. “And the media can only — because they’re dumb and they’re lazy — they can only focus on one thing at a time.”

          So the solution, per Bannon? Overwhelm them.

          “All we have to do is flood the zone,” he said. “Every day we hit them with three things. They’ll bite on one, and we’ll get all of our stuff done, bang, bang, bang. These guys will never — will never be able to recover. But we’ve got to start with muzzle velocity.”

          https://www.npr.org/2025/02/07/nx-s1-5289315/trump-week-in-review

    • MolecularCactus1324@lemmy.world
      181·
      11 days ago

      I think I heard that Trump did it because he thinks it gets him around some Biden era rule that he can’t reverse that bans oil drilling in parts of the “Gulf of Mexico.” It’s really stupid. Exxon and Chevron have both “acknowledged” the name change.

      • alsimoneau@lemmy.ca
        4·
        11 days ago

        Oh that makes sense. Like when muskrat tried to get out of Twitter suis because the name changed.

    • ooli2@lemm.eeOPEnglish
      13·
      11 days ago

      pleasing the power, so they remove any law that protect our privacy against google prying eye

      • hulfpa@lemmy.mlEnglish
        4·
        11 days ago

        Thayana good point. I need to remember my place in this world 🤣

    • ShareMySims@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
      2·
      11 days ago

      Then you must not be paying much attention, or have an understanding of how capitalism functions (nor of how and why it inevitably decays in to fascism).

  • HappySkullsplitter@lemmy.world
    95·
    11 days ago

    It’s even weirder because America doesn’t mean just the United States

    Geographically, America is too ambiguous of a name for the Gulf of Mexico

    Wouldn’t the Gulf of California also qualify as being the Gulf of America?

    The Caribbean Sea?

    Basically every river system from the Mississippi and and the Amazon are also “American” from northernmost point of North America to the southernmost point of South America, it’s all “America”

    Naming the Gulf of Mexico “America” is almost as bad as naming a country “earth”

      • pdxfed@lemmy.world
        27·
        11 days ago

        Mexico’s full name is ”The United States of Mexico", I think they should rename their map’s version to Gulf of The United States just to add to the confusion and make the point these things, like all facts, are useless when people suffer no consequences from making them up.

    • the_weez@midwest.social
      9·
      11 days ago

      Question for all non-US natives. When somebody tells you they are from America do you think the continent or the USA?

        • the_weez@midwest.social
          7·
          11 days ago

          And that’s the point of my question, and this change. Trump feels like he won, because he took something away from Mexico.

          • BillTongg@lemmy.world
            4·
            11 days ago

            Yes, agreed. He seems to regard life as a zero-sum game, in which he can’t win unless someone else loses, so he doesn’t understand the concept of win-win. It’s a kind of cognitive bias which is a serious weakness in someone who apparently imagines himself to be a master of ‘the art of the deal’.

      • SeekPie@lemm.ee
        9·
        11 days ago

        Yeah, it’s even better than GMaps for me, because GMaps doesn’t have bike navigation (where I live) while Organic Maps has all the bike lanes marked and navigatable.

        • vaionko@sopuli.xyz
          3·
          11 days ago

          Yeah it’s way better for biking and walking. I also find the map a lot more coherent, with GMaps I often had to resort to the satellite view to see what’s going on.

      • SeekPie@lemm.ee
        1·
        10 days ago

        Seems like that it is going to be not renamed but they’re adding a “official” tagged name, which is the Gulf of America.

  • Limonene@lemmy.world
    61·
    11 days ago

    Meanwhile on Openstreetmap:

    name Golfo de México

    name:en Gulf of Mexico

    official_name:en_US Gulf of America

    Showing just enough acknowledgement to confirm they’ve discussed the executive order, but they aren’t going to follow it.

    • Korhaka@sopuli.xyzEnglish
      1·
      11 days ago

      Surely that is following it? Change the name in American. Leave it the same in English.

      • balsoft@lemmy.ml
        6·
        11 days ago

        It’s kind of a malicious compliance thing. The new name will not show up on any map renders, moreover it’s not likely to be shown in most apps even if you select the object (because official_name:* is not supported by most apps).

        • irreticent@lemmy.zipEnglish
          8·
          11 days ago

          Trump signed an executive order renaming the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America. Executive orders aren’t laws, they’re just memos stating what the federal government will do. Google decided to bend the knee for the new king.

          For U.S. Google Map users only, the body of water formerly known as the Gulf of Mexico will now appear as the Gulf of America when using the navigational service.

          The change comes just several weeks after President Donald Trump signed an executive order for the gulf to be renamed and on Sunday declared February 9 was officially Gulf of America Day.

          Following the order, Google stated that it has a longstanding practice of implementing name changes when done by official government sources.

    • ShareMySims@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
      2·
      11 days ago

      Lmfao, as if Keith would dare stand up to a mega corporation, or a fascist for that matter… I give it a week, at absolute most.

  • helloyanis@jlai.lu
    52·
    11 days ago

    No better time than the present to switch to OpenStreetMap

    For Android, I use OsmAnd~ which uses OpenStreetMap data and allows you to download maps to calculate routes offline, something Google Maps couldn’t do for routes by foot and by bike last time I tried.

    It also has better coverage for some small paths in natural areas like forests. Give it a try!

    • oxf@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
      7·
      11 days ago

      The OsmAnd~ app, from fdroid, is the premium (and paid) version og OsmAnd, also known as OsmAnd+.

      If you use the fdroid version, and enjoy the app, consider donating to the developers through other means.

      • SLVRDRGN@lemmy.world
        2·
        10 days ago

        Apparently…

        The Maya referred to the Gulf as Chactemal, meaning “the red place,” likely referencing the reddish hues of the water at sunset or its fertile coastlines. Indigenous names were often descriptive, reflecting geographical features or spiritual beliefs tied to the environment. Unfortunately, much of this indigenous nomenclature was lost or overwritten during European colonization.

        Link. I’m sure there are better ones. Hard to find good sources.

  • Hux@lemmy.ml
    41·
    11 days ago

    Using the website from outside of the US shows it with its proper name, but then the asshat version in parentheses.

  • fmstrat@lemmy.nowsci.comEnglish
    40·
    11 days ago

    Time for a repeat comment: Organic Maps does everything Google Maps does (except traffic conditions), and is FOSS. Please encourage places to contribute business information to Open Street Maps.

    • chiliedogg@lemmy.world
      15·
      11 days ago

      “Except traffic” is not a little thing. It’s like putting up an ad for a house with all the features you’d expect, except a roof.

      With my daily commute, there are a dozen routes I can take and traffic conditions make it so that from day to day, there can be an hour difference between different routes. It’s literally the only reason I use navigation apps over a cheap GPS unit with no live online connection requirement to navigate.

      • Teppichbrand@feddit.org
        5·
        11 days ago

        Traffic condition can only be provided if you track millions of phones. I don’t want that, so I opt out. I don’t want Google to manage traffic for me.

        • chiliedogg@lemmy.world
          1·
          11 days ago

          Or you can do it like News stations do and just use a fucking camera feed and police acanner to have someone say “hey - there’s a lot of cars at Interstate 99 and Main” or “There’s reports of a wreck at 300 Elm street”.

          Traffic reporting doesn’t require device-level tracking.

          • FauxLiving@lemmy.world
            1·
            10 days ago

            to have someone

            In order to do this at scale, that’s a lot of someones who all need to be paid. You’d need several people, per city, to manually review traffic cameras and manually issue reports.

            Unless you want to pay $200/mo for traffic updates, you can’t do this using humans.

            • chiliedogg@lemmy.world
              1·
              10 days ago

              Growing up, we had 5 TV stations and 20 radio stations that managed to do it just off of cereal advertisements. I’d gladly pay 5 bucks a month for it, and with millions of people in the metro area just having 1% of people use a $5/month service you’d be looking at 6 figures a month, which is plenty to pay for the service.

              • FauxLiving@lemmy.world
                1·
                10 days ago

                The only way to know if it would work would be to roll the dice and make a startup. You’ll need enough cash to cover a year or two of projected operations, the capital to develop the application and infrastructure in addition to the money required to advertise the service.

                At the same time you have to realize that your proposition for potential customers is ‘You can pay us $5 to get the service that Google gives you for free and it only works in this one metro area.’ De-googling is a popular topic on nerd social media but the average person would gladly trade all of their privacy to pay less money.

                If we could magic wand a company into existence and capture all of the privacy focused customer base in a large metro area then yeah, the company could pay the operating expenses. But going from ‘This is a cool idea’ to ‘We have a successful service that has a positive cash flow’ is a hard, capital intensive, process.

                • chiliedogg@lemmy.world
                  1·
                  10 days ago

                  I think a municipal economic development corporation grant could be an answer.

                  EDCs exist in lots of cities. The usual setup is they’re given a percentage of local sales tax, and they provide grants to businesses to move into town or start up. When the business is sucessful, they’ll end up paying back more in taxes than was given to them initially, both through direct taxes, but also by providing higher-paying jobs for residents, who will pay more in their property taxes and spend money at local businesses, bringing in more sales tax.

                  The EDC could pay for the startup to provide the service locally, and then it can spread to other cities, who can either pay for it as a municipal service, or through subscriptions.

    • AugustWest@lemmy.world
      11·
      11 days ago

      I think this is important. That said, traffic info is the whole ballgame for many people. People who live, work, and drive in metro areas frequently use map applications even when driving everyday routes to avoid traffic.

      I don’t see Google/Waze/Apple maps getting any less popular unless there is a FOSS alternative that includes live traffic, which does not seem possible while remaining free. People will choose free every time, especially since Google maps works so well.

      Personally, I would pay some amount for a privacy-minded alternative, something like OrganicMaps with live traffic. But I doubt it could ever attain the user base it would need to provide accurate traffic info.

      • fmstrat@lemmy.nowsci.comEnglish
        2·
        11 days ago

        Yea, I really wish I had more spare time. Algorithms like this are an area of expertise for me, and I’d love to build an anonymized service that works with Organic Maps. It’s annoying when I know it is something I could make that would support high volume, but just don’t have time for (mainly because of all the ongoing optimization it would require).

    • Arehandoro@lemmy.ml
      3·
      11 days ago

      Talking about FOSS; I prefer OsmAnd because its licence is GPLv3, as opposed to the Apache 2 licence from Organic Maps.

      • fmstrat@lemmy.nowsci.comEnglish
        2·
        11 days ago

        Yup, big OsmAnd fan, too. We use it for backpacking and biking, but have found OM to be more driver friendly, which is why I recommended it here.

  • baggachipz@sh.itjust.works
    30·
    11 days ago

    Yes, Tim Apple bent the knee, but the company seems to be holding steadfast.

    Apple Maps

    Edit God dammit, they changed it. Cowards.

      • the_weez@midwest.social
        413·
        11 days ago

        100% These people think they are sticking it to Google by buying a pixel and installing a custom ROM. Instead they just inflated Google’s user count.

        • sorghum@sh.itjust.works
          141·
          11 days ago

          This will be a problem until a non-google open OS is adopted for mobile phones. Right now that list is incredibly short and nothing competes in the flagship department. I don’t see it changing anytime soon because gen x and millenials may be the last generations that have a signifigant portion of itself that has a grasp of how computers work beyond “tap app icon, app does things”.

          Thing I took for granted like how a file system works is lost on my kids (late Z early alpha). Explaining what a file extension is like teaching a new language. I used to think “training wheels” for learning computering via tablets and phones and touch screens were a good thing but there is nothing that compels people today to shed themselves of them. It feels very reminiscent of my childhood and teaching my boomer dad how to right click. I think computer literacy needs to be required education, but I’m afraid that the definition for computer literacy might be meaningless nowadays if it doesn’t go beyond open app store, install app, run app.

          • the_weez@midwest.social
            22·
            11 days ago

            US public education computer literacy is dead, and it’s not going to get better for at least 5+ years, best case scenario. Even if the person that is elected after Trump is a Democrat, it will take years to rebuild to where we were before big tech started bribing school IT departments. You think Apple/Google/Microsoft give a flying fuck about computer literacy being taught in schools? Because that’s who currently decide the computer literacy program that the public school will provide. Whichever vendor they decide to go with. At this point I’m not convinced that Google is a better choice than the others, but it’s also akin to choosing the least shitty sandwich at a shit-sandwich buffet.

            • sorghum@sh.itjust.works
              2·
              11 days ago

              In hindsight, this has been a downward trend since the proliferation of smart phones circa 2012. Google (android) isn’t the best choice, but it is much better being open source over other ecosystems namely Apple. There is also an issue I strongly suspect that wireless carriers wouldn’t allow open hardware/software on their networks because they have baked in restrictions in the major OSes on how you can access the network like tethering. I don’t expect that to change for the better either because even when net neutrality was a thing wireless was exempt from the rules. Kinda reminds me how back in the day ISPs had to be forced to offer naked DSL (internet from the phone company without requiring phone service). This all has deep issues that won’t be resolved anytime soon if ever. I’m putting my money on Linux becoming an actual threat to Microsoft and Apple in the desktop, laptop, handheld space and then that spreading into the mobile and tablet space. Depending on how Apple and Google antitrust situations are handled, we could start to see a shift by the end of the decade at best. This is why the tech sector will cozy up and do the bidding of whoever is in power. They won’t run the risk of drawing the ire of the government to break up their monopolies so long as the party in power believes tech companies are in their party’s pocket. This shift happened when Biden’s election was inevitable toward Democrat favored polices and it’s happening now for Republican favord polices since the last Biden Trump debate made a Trump victory inevitable.

              My points are the tech sector is blatantly doing whatever it can to keep its power and change won’t happen quickly if it happens at all.

              • the_weez@midwest.social
                2·
                11 days ago

                This trend started waaaay before 2012. When I graduated highschool the only computer class that was offered was a basic MS Office and advanced MS office. The people making these type of decisions for public schools are rarely tech literate themselves, they physically cannot make an informed choice. This will not be resolved until big tech is dissolved, or strong regulations are pushed by the voting population. If anyone wants their children to be tech literate I recommend getting your kids in front of a keyboard and mouse instead of a touchscreen as early as you would allow them to use a tablet. The tablet will be easier for both of you, and that’s exactly what they want.

  • eldesgraciado@lemm.ee
    261·
    11 days ago

    This is pathetic and reeks of insecurity big time. Hope that this debacle improves your QoL, Americans.

    • Zink@programming.dev
      9·
      11 days ago

      American here. It’s freaking embarrassing. Not as much as all the other shit, and certainly not as sad and tragic. Our neighbors elected a cartoon villain and his best buddy, another cartoon villain.

    • JohnnyEnzyme@lemm.ee
      4·
      11 days ago

      Seems like all the high-visibility, internet-focused corporations are rushing forward to bend the knee.

      I guess it would be pretty interesting to see one of them do the opposite. As in, how easily and quickly would the exec and other branches be able to attack them, maybe even to destroy them?

    • hansolo@lemm.eeEnglish
      3·
      11 days ago

      What’s funny is the rest of the world gets “Gulf of Mexico (Gulf of America)” which ups the insecurity I expect.

    • ShareMySims@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
      2·
      11 days ago

      reeks of insecurity big time.

      No, it’s literally the opposite, it’s a display of power and support for an openly fascist regime they KNOW will benefit them financially.

      It’s the epitome of capitalism, and precisely why said capitalism will always decay in to fascism.

    • threeduck@aussie.zone
      24·
      11 days ago

      Eh I’m on the opposite side, despite being a massive lefty. Why would an american company not follow an American dictate just for America? (It’s still called the Gulf of Mexico on Google in every other country) It sets a wild precedent where private businesses refuse to follow the fairly inconsequential requests of their government.

      • Kage520@lemmy.world
        1·
        11 days ago

        The Mexican president asked for the US to be called Mexico Americana or something like that. I haven’t seen if google complied yet, but if they don’t, would you support them not?

        • threeduck@aussie.zone
          1·
          10 days ago

          Well google is a US country, so google bending the knee to Trump is fairly expected.

          But sure, if NZ wants to call itself Aotearoa, google should change that. Is Mexico wants to rename it to Mexico Americana, go for it.

          If the Mexican people take Umbridge with their government renaming their local maps, take it up with the government, not the map drawers.

      • ShareMySims@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
        1·
        11 days ago

        “I’m such a massive lefty, I see no issue with a mega corporation bending the knee to a fascist regime and helping them virtually take over territory that isn’t theirs” 🙄

        (also no, it isn’t only showing in the states, and this being an expected part of capitalism doesn’t make it any less of a problem to be taken seriously)

        • threeduck@aussie.zone
          1·
          10 days ago

          What does google have to gain from saying no? A mild recapture of respect from the people with no political power?

          Also the territory isn’t there’s, sure, but it’s also no one’s. If weird ass trump wants to rename it in their countries name, go for it.

          Google shows Gulf of Mexico to Mexico, and both names to every other country.

          As Bannon literally pointed out, this is absolutely a Trump tactic, to firehouse the news with bullshit stories, and THIS is comparatively a non issue.