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Comment by riffraff | Hacker News Reader

the "gulf of america" thing is Google pandering to Trump, they originally had a policy of only using the popular name in a given locale.

> 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.

https://publicpolicy.googleblog.com/2008/04/how-google-deter...

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I think they mostly started with geolocation-dependent names in the early 2010s, e.g. Kashmir and Palestine.

that's different, they had location-dependent names at the time of this article too, the issue is specifically about the fact that even if you have location-dependent names you'd use the name that is commonly used in that location, not an arbitrary regulation name.

I thought they used the Geographic Names Information System (GNIS) from the USGS. If this buffoonery does pass, it will reflect in the government official data source - and thus on Google maps?

And nobody outside of the US cares about what's inside those official databases. If Trump changes the name of China to "Smelly Food Country" it might be required to change this in US Google Maps But if this propagates to Google Maps in other countries people will just laugh at them and might stop using it.

I don't think Google is required to change anything, since it's not a government agency.

But they should see what their home country calls it? I am totally against this, but don't really think Google is bending the knee or hard-coding a name here.

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