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One kicker is how many sites leveraging Google Maps API in Canada are showing "Lake of America". I'm not sure if that's because they're proxying the Google Maps requests through a US server, or they're using an API call to specifically request the US version of the map. But either way, it's a pretty bad faux pas, especially for oligarchic telcos that wrap themselves in the flag when they're begging for protection from international competitors.

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We just got a bug in our app for this, you basically have to add `region=CA` when instantiating maps API, otherwise it defaults to something hmm, else (some says US, but in EU we clearly see Ontario, so there is some geoguessing or other mechanism behind)

Nice. TIL

This is where my position gets more nuanced. The default value should still be Lake Ontario, because that's what most of the world recognises it as. It's the most neutral name for it.

In general, I don't like that the world defaults to the Silicon Valley version of reality.

I mean is it the API or is it the website provider's metadata? I don't know anything about the gmaps API. I would assume the default locale would be that of the requester, not US (but then I know MS has the "Invariant locale" which is often best-practice, which is de-facto US... not sure if Google has similar).

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