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Mexico Threatens To Sue Google Over Gulf Renaming (apnews.com) 363

Mexico has threatened legal action against Google after the tech company refused to fully restore the name Gulf of Mexico on its mapping service, escalating a dispute sparked by U.S. President Donald Trump's move to rename the body of water. Google Maps currently displays the water body as Gulf of America within U.S. territory, Gulf of Mexico within Mexican borders, and Gulf of Mexico (Gulf of America) elsewhere, according to a letter from Google vice president Cris Turner to Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum.

Mexico argues the policy violates its sovereignty since the U.S. controls only 46% of the gulf, while Mexico and Cuba control 49% and 5% respectively. The historic name Gulf of Mexico, dating to 1607, is recognized by the United Nations. The dispute has strained U.S.-Mexico relations, with the White House barring Associated Press reporters from events over the news agency's naming policy.

Mexico Threatens To Sue Google Over Gulf Renaming

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  • No legal standing (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Google can call it whatever they want.
    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by GigaplexNZ ( 1233886 )
      Trump has no legal standing to rename a territory that he doesn't have majority control over.
      • by Valgrus Thunderaxe ( 8769977 ) on Monday February 17, 2025 @10:18PM (#65174665)
        Actually, he probably does. It doesn't mean any other party has to acknowledge the change, however.
  • by LindleyF ( 9395567 ) on Monday February 17, 2025 @10:10PM (#65174651)
    Someone figured out that Trump could do something weird and triggering, and the responses of various parties could be used to filter friend from foe.
    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Dan667 ( 564390 )
      or trump has dementia and has no idea what he is doing.
      • by LindleyF ( 9395567 ) on Monday February 17, 2025 @11:11PM (#65174761)
        Both can be simultaneously true. This administration is nothing like Trump 1. My theory is that certain people figured out how to use Trump as a channel for their pet agendas during the last 4 years.
        • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

          by Darinbob ( 1142669 )

          Much of the point of Project 2025. What's scary about that document is not just the policies it wants to enact, but the methodical ways it seeks to achieve this. Instructions to new hires about what to do, such as to not retain any paperwork, have meeting outside the office to avoid the laws about record keeping, how to hit the ground running. Remember, Trump denied involvement or knowledge about projecft 2025, yet their playbook was enacted on day one.

          https://www.propublica.org/art... [propublica.org]
          (also https://www.p [project2025.org]

        • by Epeeist ( 2682 )

          My theory is that certain people figured out how to use Trump as a channel for their pet agendas during the last 4 years.

          Well, he certainly fills the role of "useful idiot"

      • The problem is that the people who hand him the memos to sign do know what they're doing. Trump is being used as a puppet. (I keep looking for the strings, but maybe he's got internal servos)

        (And who is the guy who is handing him the stuff to sign and speaking quietly what they're for? He honestly looks like a sibling of Stephen Miller, a clone created for organ harvesting purposes. When they stand next to each other they look soooo much alike. Is the administration nepotism now extending beyond just t

      • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

        by Shaitan ( 22585 )

        He's on public display with full transparency pretty much daily. He definitely does not have dementia.

        He's clear, focused, and candid and he's keeping his promises with ever increasing public support.

    • I was looking at it and it really breaks Google Maps. While it is labelled Gulf of Mexico, but if you type in Gulf of, auto complete reccomends

      Gulf of Mexico (Gulf of America)

      Not Gulf of America. However, if you request directions from Gulf of Mexico to Gulf of America you will be informed that it is unable to find a route!

      As if Google Maps wasn't unreliable enough, this will likely break it even more in some unusual ways.
    • Yep, what is he trying to deflect attention from is the question.
  • The true "Gulf of [the United States of] America" is the gulf between our various political factions.

    • by dskoll ( 99328 ) on Monday February 17, 2025 @10:28PM (#65174683) Homepage

      Actually, the true Gulf of America is the wealth inequality.

      • Actually, the true Gulf of America is the wealth inequality.

        That's part of the political divide.

        Democrats are more likely than Republicans to see inequality as an important issue.

        Democrats divide Americans into the 1% and the 99%, which means a Democrat earning $150k feels solidarity with the homeless while putting all the blame on people earning even more.

        Republicans divide Americans into the 60% "makers" and 40% "takers". So, a Republican construction worker earning $40k sees himself as a
        temporarily embarrassed millionaire [cribchronicles.com], held down by the freeloaders in the unem

      • Get a job, bitch.

  • by bigpat ( 158134 ) on Monday February 17, 2025 @10:22PM (#65174671)

    The order renamed the area bounded by the US and the Continental shelf "extending to the seaward boundary with Mexico and Cuba in the area formerly named as the Gulf of Mexico"

    That area is recognized by both countries to be under US jurisdiction by treaty. Mexico could retain the Gulf of Mexico name in their waters without conflicting names.

  • It should vary (Score:2, Informative)

    by Baron_Yam ( 643147 )

    The US can call it "The Guld of Trump's Dick Waving Trophy" if it wants, the rest of the world will call it whatever they always have.

    Google should respect this, and show the locally appropriate name. Which is presumably what they typically do when a jackass with power isn't threatening everyone around him if they don't accommodate every stupid stunt tried to pull or whim he has.

    Can't you guys just get to your civil war and get it over with? The Republicans are going to boil you like the proverbial frog,

  • by ArchieBunker ( 132337 ) on Monday February 17, 2025 @10:26PM (#65174679)

    Inflation is up https://www.reuters.com/market... [reuters.com]

    19 century diseases are making a comeback https://www.kumc.edu/about/new... [kumc.edu]

    The head of the health department and longtime heroin junkie https://www.yahoo.com/news/fac... [yahoo.com] wants to send people to "wellness farms"

    An unelected immigrant is rifling through the treasury and now the taxpayers records. https://www.nytimes.com/2025/0... [nytimes.com]

    I thought you guys wanted the government out of your personal business?

    With 4 airplane crashes under his watch orange jesus is firing air traffic controllers. https://www.usatoday.com/story... [usatoday.com]

    Orange jesus fucked up and fired everyone in charge of the country's nuclear weapons https://www.wtae.com/article/t... [wtae.com]

    Now he's trying to call them back.

    Boomers are still giggling at all these stories but shit is about to get real for you. Your medicaid is next on the chopping block. https://www.newsweek.com/steve... [newsweek.com]

    • by Baron_Yam ( 643147 ) on Monday February 17, 2025 @11:10PM (#65174757)

      Reality abides. You can put an antivaxxer in control of health policy and you can silence critics, but polio won't respect your politics. Or measles, mumps, or rubella. Chickenpox isn't so bad, but it's still annoying. COVID is still bad, though not quite as bad as it was a first. Influenza never really stopped being bad, it varies a lot.

      People are going to get sick and die, and when it gets bad enough they'll rediscover respect for vaccinations. When my parents were children, they'd quarantine you in your damn house if you got sick with certain things and everyone was supportive of it because they were terrified of catching whatever you had. That attitude will come back.

      The same truth applies to many other things. You can act like tariffs are a tax on foreigners, but Americans will pay. You can act like immigrants are a problem and kick them out, but you'll have a labor shortage. You can claim your (former) allies are taking advantage of you and bully them economically and threaten them militarily, but... they're not going to be your allies any longer and you'll find out what 'soft power' was after you've lost it.

      As a citizen of a country that's going to suffer for American ignorance and belligerence, while half its population CHEERS, if you don't get your shit together America, I hope you fail hard and fast so most of it stays inside your borders.

      • People are going to get sick and die, and when it gets bad enough they'll rediscover respect for vaccinations.

        Trouble is, the wrong people are going to die. When diseases spread, children (who don't make the decision about their own vaccination) and people who can't vaccinate due to medical reasons will get thrashed. The healthy parents who are getting the benefits of vaxes they themselves received as children will mostly be fine.

        • by Shaitan ( 22585 )

          Very very small children maybe but for the most part children are less likely to die from illness than adults. It's the elderly and the already sick who would die.

    • by rsilvergun ( 571051 ) on Monday February 17, 2025 @11:11PM (#65174763)
      According to a pew research poll The average Trump voter believes 20% of the country is trans. But it's actually even sillier than that because none of them actually think about trans men so to them that entire 20% is trans women.

      So they think 20% of the country is trans women. But given that women make up half the population that effectively means they think that They think 40% of women are trans.

      Try to imagine the level of the mind who can somehow come to that conclusion. The poll was fairly accurate and well conducted. Those people are real and they're out there right now in a absolute state of terror because they think they've gotten almost 50% chance of hitting on a trans girl every time they go to a bar.

      There really is nothing you can do with that kind of crazy. It took 10 years of non-stop propaganda scaring the shit out of them but they are now absolutely quaking in their boots at the thought of transsexual women. And if they can be convinced of something is ridiculous as that try to imagine what else they can be convinced of.

      Honestly though if we just do something about voter suppression and all those old Jim Crow laws then all of this solves itself
      • About 50% of the population is trans now, Trump declared by executive order that everyone is now female. If you identify as a man, you are now a trans man.

      • by Tom ( 822 ) on Tuesday February 18, 2025 @02:47AM (#65175035) Homepage Journal

        According to a pew research poll The average Trump voter believes 20% of the country is trans.

        Funny, a quick search says that it is actually left-leaning voters who vastly over-estimate the percentage of trans people (10-30%, while the actual number is around 0.5%).

        That might be because on the left you are more likely to have trans people in your circles, but still. That's a long way off.

        (no I'm not a Trump voter at all. I just realized a long time ago that in political discussions, usually both sides are wrong.)

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Ly4 ( 2353328 )

      From whitehouse.gov: people with autism, asthma, auto-immune disease, and ADHD are a "dire threat to the American people and our way of life."

      https://www.whitehouse.gov/pre... [whitehouse.gov]

      • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

        by Shaitan ( 22585 )

        A small but rather important distinction.

        It says the rising number of children being diagnosed with those conditions is a dire threat to the American people. It DOES NOT say the people with those conditions are a dire threat.

        • They're only upset that it's being diagnosed, and they're only upset about that because they might have to release some funds for medical care. If they cared about the rise of adverse health conditions they wouldn't be cutting research funding.

    • by ndsurvivor ( 891239 ) on Monday February 17, 2025 @11:33PM (#65174793)
      I think that MAGAs are FUCKING UP AMERICA right now, and Trump needs to be Impeached. That is just my opinion.
    • It is difficult to read through your thoughts, they are directly on point. I doubt if trump supporters have the brain cells to digest what you are saying.
  • The Gulf of Denmark!

  • Mexico
  • -and all that. No other tech company renamed their fucking maps, Google gets what it gets.
  • It sure took a long time to convince Claude that since its knowledge stops at April 2024 such amazing upheavals could actually have taken place ini the past month. Here's what Claude had to say..

    Claude after a bit..:
    I appreciate you bringing this up, but I need to clarify something important: to my knowledge (as of my last update in April 2024), there has been no official renaming of the Gulf of Mexico to "Gulf of America" by any U.S. President. Such a major geopolitical action would have been widely report

    • Wow. Just wow. Social media campaigns driven by LLMs are definitely going to be a thing.

      Claude asked if I wanted him to make some sample posts so I said yes..

      The first campaign focused on historical accuracy but it seemed weak since apparently a lot of people don't care. (posts added at the end). But then I asked, "Can you please make posts that focus on making Google want to backtrack on this, or embarrassing the White House and MAGAs for doing this?"

      I'm impressed. Also, a little scared at how well this th

  • America is a continent, not a nation. With the Gulf being shared by two countries in the Americas, calling it the Gulf of America seems perfectly fitting.

    • America is a continent, not a nation. With the Gulf being shared by two countries in the Americas, calling it the Gulf of America seems perfectly fitting.

      No, "North America" is a continent. Which means your perfectly fitting name would be Gulf of North America. But what are the odds of Trumpsters supporting that?

      • by Sethra ( 55187 )

        The Americas is a single continent that comprises both North and South America. North America is not a continent on its own, nor is South America.

        As for support from the current administration - why would it matter? The name is what it is no matter what angle you view it from.

        • by Shaitan ( 22585 )

          False. Though some are improperly taught that way in both 5 and 7 continent models North and South America are typically treated as separate and not a single continent. https://www.worldatlas.com/art... [worldatlas.com]

          The truth is easily found by looking at the plates which define the continents and as you can see north and south america are distinct plates and move independently from one another.

          https://www.britannica.com/sci... [britannica.com]

  • Trump and white people do not. I am a white guy. I like my mexican neighbors.
  • Sorry, Myanmar, Democratic Republic of Congo, and Turkiye.

    In Australia the media keeps renaming landmarks to Aboriginal names, and no-one knows what they're talking about. So they end up listing both names, which wastes everyone's time.

  • by Tom ( 822 )

    I've lived with a person suffering from Narcissistic personality disorder (which is NOT the same as the common narcissism that so many streamers and TikTokers exhibit). This is something I've seen plenty of times: It's a test. "can I enforce my personal truth on the world around me?"

    It's surprising that Google of all carved in so quickly. Don't they have entire departments of psychologists? Or are they using them only to craft advertisement for maximum effect?

    Alas, they're not the only ones. Apple Maps does

    • You don't get to be one of the richest companies in the world by not being evil...

      Most of the tech bros bent the knee very fast because, well that's where the money and the power is. This isn't new, of course. There's a reason most of the phone companies bent the knee back in the day on warrantless wiretaps, for example. The ones that didn't and asked for legal warrants were summarily fired from government contracts. I was in the US when that happened, Qwest was fired from Los Alamos (this also happened sho

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