Google avoids a breakup of its ad tech business • Hacker News Board

Re: Google avoids a breakup of its ad tech business

#381

Post by ThoseWhoSquirm » Sat, Sep 05, 2026, 5:48 AM UTC

bigstrat2003 wrote: post #161

jvolkman wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. We had the same comments about Gulf of America. Edit: I don't know that there's an actual database served up by the US Gov, but governments control the naming of these things within their own jurisdictions. All of the big mapping products have the ability to serve up different names based on where you're viewing from. And Apple just renamed: https://apnews.com/article/apple-lake-ontario-america-google...

> governments control the naming of these things within their own jurisdictions No they don't. People can, and should, call things what they want without deference to government overreach.

We can do that for ourselves, but it's a lot harder for the operator of a massive maps platform, based from its inception on the use of the federally controlled GNIS, to just call things what they want, or even what most of their users want things to be called.

For once I'm posting about this in a forum where I can reasonably expect that most users will understand the technical difficulties that would arise if Google wanted to avoid using the new names.

The average person seems to believe that Google can change the toponyms back to Gulf of Mexico and Lake Ontario as easily as taking down a road sign and nailing up a different one.

Re: Google avoids a breakup of its ad tech business

#382

Post by ThoseWhoSquirm » Sat, Sep 05, 2026, 6:00 AM UTC

biophysboy wrote: post #58

jvolkman wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. We had the same comments about Gulf of America. Edit: I don't know that there's an actual database served up by the US Gov, but governments control the naming of these things within their own jurisdictions. All of the big mapping products have the ability to serve up different names based on where you're viewing from. And Apple just renamed: https://apnews.com/article/apple-lake-ontario-america-google...

It makes perfect sense that govs control names within their jurisdiction - I am eyerolling at both the name change and the reaction. I am curious though - is it convention to leave the data as is, or is it illegal to modify it? Regardless, itll just be changed back in 2 years; as long as I can type "lake ontario" and get directed to Lake Ontario, I do not care at all what the gov database calls it currently.

>I am curious though - is it convention to leave the data as is, or is it illegal to modify it?

Given the First Amendment, it's in no way illegal for individuals or corporations to use whatever place names they want. But if yout maps platform is essentially wedded to a government database and is designed entirely around the use of that database, using different place names is much, much more difficult.

Re: Google avoids a breakup of its ad tech business

#383

Post by ThoseWhoSquirm » Sat, Sep 05, 2026, 6:25 AM UTC

sixothree wrote: post #66

biophysboy wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It makes perfect sense that govs control names within their jurisdiction - I am eyerolling at both the name change and the reaction. I am curious though - is it convention to leave the data as is, or is it illegal to modify it? Regardless, itll just be changed back in 2 years; as long as I can type "lake ontario" and get directed to Lake Ontario, I do not care at all what the gov database calls it currently.

I wouldn't exactly describe one person as "the government".

The president is the government as far as assigning or altering place names is concerned, but only for names not established by an act of Congress. That's why Trump was able to change the name of Denali back to Mount McKinkley; he was simply reversing an Obama-era executive order. But he couldn't rename Denali National Park because that was established by Congress.