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Comment by BytesAndGears | Hacker News Reader

Why would they? Its name was officially changed. Things are renamed all the time.

For a recent example, Mount Evans in Colorado was changed to Mount Blue Sky

Mount Evans was local to the US, and was not a contested international name. This is the first time the US has been on Google's "Sensitive Country" list.

https://www.cnbctv18.com/technology/google-reclassifies-us-a...

There's a big difference between those two situations.

The US does not control the majority of the Gulf of Mexico. It cannot "change the name" of it any more than it can change the name of the Moon.

The executive branch has decided to call it something different than its internationally accepted name as a political stunt. Google could just ignore this, but instead they chose to obey in advance.

I mean I agree that it’s stupid, but my point was that there are protocols in place to handle this already.

If the US government says it’s the name of something, then it’s any map company’s job to display the valid name of the thing to the users in that country. They still show “Gulf of Mexico” to users in other countries.

Well for one thing it's stupid to change the name. Per your example, I still call it Mount Evans and so does everyone else. This sort of thing is just a pissing contest where the government figures they can up and change the name, but that doesn't mean anyone is obligated to go along with it.

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