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...
They'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.
It has been obvious since Google pulled from China and got replaced by even more censored alternatives that corporations have close to zero weight against the arm of the state, and taking the moral high ground against an established government accomplishes close to nothing.
There's no "moral weight" to throw around. Until Google spins up a well-regulated militia, they do what the guys with guns tell them to do.
Perhaps they should not have reacted so quickly? The only US state which borders Lake Ontario rejects the name change, and US states are sovereign, so it’s not so obvious to me that the name change is official. But now it’s too late. Moving fast to comply with authoritarian mandates lends them a lot of power by undercutting anyone’s efforts to object.
In 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.
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..
And 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"
Start swimming in Lake America, end up in Lake Ontario. Funnily enough, Ontario is an indigenous word that predates both American and Canadian governments.
> 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.
Page 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.
In the scope of things, this one is relatively harmless, distracting from the real damage done by the administration, e.g. by killing offshore wind energy projects using taxpayer money, also by lowering drinking water purity and pollution standards.
It'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.
There's no "moral weight" to throw around. Until Google spins up a well-regulated militia, they do what the guys with guns tell them to do.
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.
"those outside of the U.S. and Canada will see both names"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ontario
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.
The American dream reduced to an idiocracy.
Trump renamed the lake. Google just updated the label.
But a remarkable demonstration of how rotten America has become, simply because it is so stupid.
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.
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_Oli...
[1] https://archive.org/download/the-theory-and-practice-of-olig...