Mexico will wait for Google response on Gulf of Mexico before filing lawsuit | Hacker News Reader

Mexico will wait for Google response on Gulf of Mexico before filing lawsuit

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18 pointshealsdata11 comments

This seems... futile. Google has chosen a pretty reasonable approach with tagging differently for users based on jurisdiction.

All of this is just a dick measuring exercise anyway, there's no actual territorial dispute. Ownership of the waterway is unchanged. Not sure if it's a threat to anyone's sovereignty, even though it's dumb.

Keeping a bully in check is never dumb. Otherwise, the bully will just keep on bullying. He’s 78, beyond male life expectancy, and has less than four years left of his final term. The effort isn’t forever.

> According to the most recent data from the Social Security Administration, the life expectancy for a 78 year old American male is an additional 8.77 years, for a total life expectancy of 86.77 years.

The party they are threatening with legal action is Google.

Why is Google making the change? To curry favor with the current admin (which they are afraid of). They could simply ignore it. But if they don’t, other nation states must resort to legal action, as it is one of the few remaining paths of recourse available.

The problem is the president, not that Google is afraid of him. Private corporations should be afraid of democratically-elected regulators, especially the regulator-in-chief.

Well -- Trump's executive order changed the official name of the body of water from the American perspective. Sure, I thought this was dumb.

But -- I said "futile" specifically about legal action against Google. They changed the name of a body of water for users in a country to the new official name of that body of water in said country.

I just don't think there's anything there (on Google's side). Perhaps I'm wrong though, as I'm not an international law expert.

Google didn't rename parts of Ukraine for Russia.

The change itself may be justifiable but the reasoning is not consistent.

https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2016/07/28/google-renames-pla...

I think it's a different situation in Crimea, as that's very much an active territorial dispute. Google went with the names that Ukraine changed, as it's internationally recognized as a part of the Ukraine. Worth noting I don't even think Google Maps is maintained in Russia anymore.

An example of consistency I think would be the East Sea/Sea of Japan:

"Google Maps labels it the Sea of Japan for Japanese users, the East Sea for South Korean viewers and uses both names — stylized as Sea of Japan (East Sea) — for everyone else."

> But -- I said "futile" specifically about legal action against Google. They changed the name of a body of water for users in a country to the new official name of that body of water in said country.

I live nowhere near the US. I access the internet without a VPN. My government has nothing to do with this nonsense. I open Google and see "Gulf of America" between parenthesis.

They changed it for way more than US citizens.

> This seems... futile. Google has chosen a pretty reasonable approach with tagging differently for users based on jurisdiction.

Now I look at Google Maps and see the nonsensical "Gulf of America" between parenthesis.

I live nowhere close to the US.

There is nothing reasonable in unilaterally pushing a new name onto the world just because a banana republic dictator felt like renaming it.

> All of this is just a dick measuring exercise anyway, there's no actual territorial dispute.

Renaming a geographic landmark as "X of America" is dick measuring. Asking Google to be a grown-up and fix their mistake is not unreasonable, neither is suing them if they refuse.

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