Google Maps Renames Lake Ontario to Lake America for U.S. Users
Following President Trump's executive order, Google Maps now labels Lake Ontario as 'Lake America' for users in the United States, while Canadians still see 'Lake Ontario' and international users see both names. The change, rolled out amid an escalating U.S.-Canada trade war, mirrors Google's earlier renaming of the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America. The move, based on the U.S. Geographic Names Information System, has sparked memes and late-night jokes, and highlights the politicization of digital maps.
People using Maps in the U.S. will see 'Lake America,' those in Canada will continue to see 'Lake Ontario,' and those outside of the U.S. and Canada will see both names.
- sxp
The Google blog post is more useful: https://blog.google/products-and-platforms/products/maps/gni...
The U.S. Geographic Names Information System (GNIS) has formally changed the name for "Lake Ontario" to "Lake America" in the United States. Since we update Google Maps to reflect name changes in official government sources, which is GNIS for the U.S., people using Maps in the U.S. will see "Lake America," those in Canada will continue to see "Lake Ontario," and those outside of the U.S. and Canada will see both names. These updates follow our long-standing policy for bodies of water with names that vary from country to country, and are starting to roll out now.
Google is taking the heat for this because they have a fast engineering team that reacted within 48 hours. Based on the "Gulf of America, née Mexico" debacle, the other companies will follow suit when their engineering teams finish the code reviews: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Executive_Order_14172#Technolo...
- tomasphan
"Oops our Google Maps team is on vacation, an intern messed up the lake names microservice called "Lacus" and it is currently unavailable for changes. It will take the Google Maps team 2 years to make this change."
Thats how they could have pushed back against a dictator. Every finger you give him is a hand you lose.
- jventura
Couldn’t we, the rest of the world, continue to see Lake Ontario, as it was before? It’s a very stupid thing to do and I guess most of us, if asked, would be on team Canada..
- glitchc
Start swimming in Lake America, end up in Lake Ontario. Funnily enough, Ontario is an indigenous word that predates both American and Canadian governments.
- pelagicAustral
I see it as "Lake Ontario (Lake America)" in the UK. This is so petty there must be a word for it in some language somewhere in the world.