Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Google: Lake Ontario/Lake America name change in the U.S. will appear in Maps

blog.google

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

71–80 of 117 posts

Re: Google: Lake Ontario/Lake America name change in the U.S. will appear in Maps

#71

Post by seanmcdirmid »

Dig1t wrote: post #69
dataflow wrote: post #29

Anyone else worried that the next president (even Democrat, if they manage to get one) may well let some of the name changes be?

Hopefully Mount McKinley will stay. It was named that in 1896 and held that name until Obama decided to make a political statement.

Alaskans actually prefer Denali, even the republicans didn’t want the name changed back again. The state of Alaska itself officially adopted Denali as the official name in 1975, long before Obama made the political statement you are hallucinating. This is just Trump making a statement pretending that Obama was being woke rather than requesting something the Alaskans requested on their own.

Re: Google: Lake Ontario/Lake America name change in the U.S. will appear in Maps

#72

Post by DiogenesKynikos »

Georgelemental wrote: post #58
cosmicgadget wrote: post #25

We need a constitutional amendment codifying the existence independent agencies like the Federal Reserve, CFPB, social security administration, and USGS. I wish Google and others weren't telling the emperor how regal his clothes look but it seems reasonable to remain synced with the USGS.

Independent from who? The voters?

Independent from the clown sitting in the Oval Office, renaming large bodies of water with a sharpie pen.

Re: Google: Lake Ontario/Lake America name change in the U.S. will appear in Maps

#74

Post by westurner »

Sabinus wrote: post #50
fuzzfactor wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Charging and convicting of felonies didn't seem to fix it.

The Trump charging and convicting didn't happen fast enough during Biden and now Trump's immune and has pardoned his co-conspirators.

Was Obama allowed to prosecute foreign influence operations or was he prevented from interfering in elections?

Remember when Mitch filibustered Obama's SC nomination because presidents are lame ducks in their final year in office?

Great work continuing to deny rights unequally according to medical status!

Re: Google: Lake Ontario/Lake America name change in the U.S. will appear in Maps

#75

Post by KellyCriterion »

nicbou wrote: post #68

I am Canadian. It is and it will stay Lake Ontario. I am mad at Google for a lot of things, but this is not one of them. A map should represent the current reality. Google Maps defaults to the user’s local reality, which seems reasonable to me. I worked at a mapping company and we had similar setups for contested borders. You would get the map that your government accepts. It was not the company’s prerogative to weig…

EU citizen here:

For us it still says Lake Ontario :-)

Not sure what Trump is looking forward to win with all these moves?

Re: Google: Lake Ontario/Lake America name change in the U.S. will appear in Maps

#76

Post by KellyCriterion »

brandon272 wrote: post #46

Canadian companies and government websites that use embedded Google Maps are displaying “Lake America”. Not good.

At least 10m websites are using GMaps to display some stuff:

https://developers.google.com/maps

Re: Google: Lake Ontario/Lake America name change in the U.S. will appear in Maps

#77

Post by KellyCriterion »

Symbiote wrote: post #43
Marsymars wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In Google Maps app (non-American version) it is already visible as “Lake Ontario (Lake America)”. Also Mapy.com has dual names. In Canada I'm seeing simply "Lake Ontario" still.

That's what I see from Denmark.

Same for central Europe: Lake Ontario

Re: Google: Lake Ontario/Lake America name change in the U.S. will appear in Maps

#78

Post by KellyCriterion »

jmclnx wrote: post #34

I hope this change cost Google lots of $ because we all know in 2 years all these insane things Trump did we be reverted. Also how will maps work in Canada and other parts of the world ? I doubt they will change it there,

I expect them to have a whatever complex global entity/object model, allowing them to deliver whatever they want on a ruleset matching some criteria like location etc., so the change shouldnt be that huge.

Maybe someone from Google is around and can explain better.

Re: Google: Lake Ontario/Lake America name change in the U.S. will appear in Maps

#79

Post by KellyCriterion »

JohnFen wrote: post #48
dataflow wrote: post #29

Anyone else worried that the next president (even Democrat, if they manage to get one) may well let some of the name changes be?

My friends and I are just going to refer to it as Lake Epstein until/unless the executive order is undone. I mean, Trump isn't the only one that can unilaterally change the names of things and in the end, what matters isn't what the government says the name should be but what people actually call it.

Now someonen should place a pin onto Epstein Island and give it whatever related renaming with regards to Trump

Re: Google: Lake Ontario/Lake America name change in the U.S. will appear in Maps

#80

Post by Pxtl »

nicbou wrote: post #68

I am Canadian. It is and it will stay Lake Ontario. I am mad at Google for a lot of things, but this is not one of them. A map should represent the current reality. Google Maps defaults to the user’s local reality, which seems reasonable to me. I worked at a mapping company and we had similar setups for contested borders. You would get the map that your government accepts. It was not the company’s prerogative to weig…

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.
Post reply on HN