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Comment by kashunstva | Hacker News Reader

As a Canadian living in Canada, I see “Lake Ontario.” in Apple Maps. All good. No idea what Google shows because I don’t knowingly use Google products. But I do see the ridiculous “Gulf of Mexico (Gulf of America)” I don’t care what Apple shows inside of U.S. borders but dragging the rest of the world into the clown show is unnecessary.

Although I haven’t much thought through the details, I wonder if these disputed names could be subject to user preference. Basically, a pre-MAGA and MAGA setting.

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I’m in the US, near the Canadian boarder, I see both names show up. Lake Ontario shows up larger and when zoomed out. Lake America shows up smaller as I zoom in. I suppose some of this could be a cacheing issue, hard to say.

At the end of the day a map provider has the responsibility to show the official names of places on a map. If it’s one name to the US and another name for the rest of the world, the pragmatic solution is to show the “right” name based on a user’s location.

This seems like a silly hill to die on, when whoever is in office next will likely revert the names of the lake and the Gulf of Mexico, unless they are deep in the Trump camp.

Messing with maps as a negotiation tactic seems rather boneheaded. It’s extremely disruptive, but blaming Google or Apple for any of this is a bad move, imo. There are much bigger fights to be had and they need to pick their battles. This isn’t it, and it will likely resolve itself in time, and should only impact those in the US, if done right.

> It’s extremely disruptive, but blaming Google or Apple for any of this is a bad move, imo

They have the capacity to push back, instead of pre-emptively rolling over for an autocrat.

Google and Apple don’t name things. If the official name inside the US is Lake America, they are only hurting their users by delaying the change, as the map will no longer be in line with the reality the users are living in and things they need to look up.

When it’s only one thing, you might say everyone just knows, but that doesn’t scale.

And like I mentioned, they need to pick their battles. I’d rather them save their politics and favors for things like encryption and privacy, not piss it away on map data, when they can show both names and this will likely be a small footnote in history. In 20 years I can imagine, “What was the name of Lake Ontario for a brief period in the mid 2020s?” Being a question asked at bar trivia.

What about all the privacy laws that Google is bypassing in Europe? They don't rush to apply those

I would need more information to comment on that. While I am pretty anti-Google and like to assume they are dragging their feet to collect more data, if we don’t assume the worst… I’m betting the changes to comply with new privacy laws requires far more effort and adding a label to a map.

> At the end of the day a map provider has the responsibility to show the official names of places on a map.

Not really. They have the responsibility to show the useful names. They are also free to show whatever the local bully forces them to.

Neither of those is necessarily the official name.

And they do both. When I search for Lake Ontario in both Google and Apple Maps, I get to the right place.

I’m not sure what the problem is.

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