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Google Maps Renames Lake Ontario to Lake America
- vanelsas 1mo agoWhy not call it Lake Trump, hang a tarp blocking our view to it, and be done with it. The American dream reduced to an idiocracy.
- bamboozled 1mo agoProbably saving it for an ocean.
- verdverm 1mo agoI suspect the windfarm off of Scotland has highest priority
- pelagicAustral 1mo agoI 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.
- bamboozled 1mo agoIn Australia, we call it bullshit.
- java-man 1mo agosame in the U.S.; unfortunately, the convicts are running the country now.
- manvillej 1mo agoThis is the dumbest thing. And we’ve had a lot of dumb things.
- deleted 1mo ago[deleted]
- jhack 1mo agoIncredibly embarrassing for Google.
- pluc 1mo agoThat's a fun take. As a non-american, I see it as embarrassing for Americans, like most of what you let Trump do. Google is merely complying.
- SpicyLemonZest 1mo ago[dead]
- HarHarVeryFunny 1mo agoOnly 30% of Americans approve of him. It's sad this number is so high, but that's partisan politics for you. Yes, the other 70% of us do find it embarrassing. Hopefully once Trump is gone there'll be a Roman-style "Damnatio memoriae" where all his vanity, and childish idiot, renaming is undone.
- jech 1mo ago> Only 30% of Americans approve of him. He got elected with 49.8% of the popular vote, even though he had already been in power and people knew reasonably well what his policies would be.
- HarHarVeryFunny 1mo agoI guess it takes some people a long time to learn. The signs of his corruption and sociopathic personality were there long before he got elected the first time. e.g. history of refusing to pay contractors who'd worked for him.
- glitchc 1mo agoStart swimming in Lake America, end up in Lake Ontario. Funnily enough, Ontario is an indigenous word that predates both American and Canadian governments.
- pluc 1mo ago> Ontario is a term thought to have Indigenous origins, either Ontarí:io, a Huron (Wyandot) word meaning "great lake", or possibly skanadario, which means "beautiful water" or "sparkling water" in the Iroquoian languages. Ontario has about 250,000 freshwater lakes. The first mention of the name Ontario was in 1641, when "Ontario" was used to describe the land on the north shore of the easternmost part of the Great Lakes. It was adopted as the official name of the new province at Confederation in 1867. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ontario https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ontario
- sxp 1mo agoThe Google blog post is more useful: https://blog.google/products-and-platforms/products/maps/gnis-lake-ontario-lake-america-name-change/ 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#Technology_industry https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Executive_Order_14172#Technolo...
- ulfw 1mo agoNone of that GNIS US shit explains why people in the free world have to read "those outside of the U.S. and Canada will see both names"
- SpicyLemonZest 1mo agoIn particular, their claim that they do this for all bodies of water with disputed names is a lie. They do it for some, but the Heilong River is called simply the "Amur River" on my map with no notice whatsoever of the longstanding Chinese name.
- jtc-hn 1mo agoThey're also taking the heat because it's a decision, and decisions carry moral weight. They're following their policy, but it's a policy they've chosen, not one that's legally compelled. It has implications, and they are free to reexamine and refine it. Not doing so is also a choice.
- 1mo ago
- kazinator 1mo agohttps://archive.is/hllsk https://archive.is/hllsk
- xnx 1mo agoPage title is now "Google Maps Changes Lake Ontario to Lake America" which is probably more accurate than "Google Maps Renames Lake Ontario to Lake America" (which could've been the title earlier. Trump renamed the lake. Google just updated the label.
- deleted 1mo ago[deleted]
- jventura 1mo agoCouldn’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..
- ulfw 1mo agoAnd yet Google decided to have the whole planet (except Canada) see Lake America. The sucking up to Trump knows no bounds with Google and Apple (who will again follow suit as they did with Gulf of America) "those outside of the U.S. and Canada will see both names"
- ElijahLynn 1mo agoAs an American, I offer my apology to Canada for this action. It will be over in 2 more years, and we will rename it back.
- k310 1mo agoIt's yet another distraction from Epstein. Every insane and destructive action since January 2025 has been a distraction from Epstein and his clientele. Trade war on your number one neighbor makes negative sense, unless you note that it has kept Epstein out of the news, despite forthcoming financial and other disclosures in civil suits. Senator Ron Wyden is hot on the financial trail, much as the financial trail brought down Al Capone, and it's to note that there have been some "no trial, no publicity" settlements by banks.
- reboot81 1mo agoWhat if Canada changed the name to Lake Giuffre?
- k310 1mo agoBig Brother and the party must rewrite history. (NOT) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49510464#49511011 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49510464#49511011 Emmanuel Goldstein's work: From 1984 by George Orwell. THE THEORY AND PRACTICE OF OLIGARCHICAL COLLECTIVISM [0] PDF download: [1] [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Theory_and_Practice_of_Oligarchical_Collectivism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Theory_and_Practice_of_Oli... [1] https://archive.org/download/the-theory-and-practice-of-oligarchical-collectivism_202408/THE%20THEORY%20AND%20PRACTICE%20OF%20OLIGARCHICAL%20COLLECTIVISM.pdf https://archive.org/download/the-theory-and-practice-of-olig...
- mrguyorama 1mo agoBut why do people think this? Do you think his supporters will be convinced if CNN shows unredacted files? Do you think they are just "unconvinced"? That they just need more evidence? Trump said it himself. He could shoot someone on the street and they will still vote for him. They don't hate hypocrisy, or pedophiles, or corruption, or big government or anything like that at all. They hate "the weak". They hate a society which doesn't let them "Win". They won't stop doing that. Voting for Trump and watching him break things makes them feel powerful. They feel like "I did that"
- OutOfHere 1mo agoIn the scope of things, this one is relatively harmless. Consider how many people even remember the Gulf of America name. These things distract from the real damage done by the administration, e.g. by killing offshore wind energy projects using taxpayer money, accelerating CO2 emission, and lowering drinking water purity and pollution standards. Next up, he renames the Atlantic Ocean to Ocean of the Americas.
- rjrjrjrj 1mo agoBy far not the most impactful, of course. But a remarkable demonstration of how rotten America has become, simply because it is so stupid.
- deleted 1mo ago[deleted]
- ChrisArchitect 1mo ago[dupe] Discussion on source: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49495947 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49495947
- josefritzishere 1mo agoI never thought of Sundar Pichai as a loser before but ... here we are.
- 220hertz 1mo agoMaybe this was Google being cheeky for once. When I, a Canadian, dragged over the map, the Lake remained Lake Ontario. When I search for Lake America, the pin sets itself directly over the same lake with the text "Lake America: The smallest of the five great lakes." I hope this was intentional.
- tomasphan 1mo ago"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.
- I_complete_me 1mo agoMy mnemonic for remembering the Great Lakes used to be HOMES. I've updated it to HAMES.
- instaclay 1mo agoMove the S to the beginning of the word.
- kazinator 1mo agoIf you can't be magnanimous, be maganymous. Invent maganyms for places.
- deleted 1mo ago[deleted]
- canada_dry 1mo agoThe Gov't of Canada uses google maps and apparently don't have the country setting that dictates which version of Lake Ontario/America users see - so Canadians using their site get the US (Lake America). https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/google-updates-maps-lake-ontario-9.7325922 https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/google-updates-maps-lake-onta... Having experienced fed gov't IT projects I'm guessing it'll take 6-8 weeks and cost $500K-$750K to update that setting. /s