this post was submitted on 30 Aug 2026
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They could do the right thing and resist the fascism. You know, like how anybody with a platform and a moral compass would do. But I suppose expecting shitty companies to not be shitty is too much to ask.
This is not about what you consider fascism, or who you like or not. Trump has been elected, and even if it's because of a bunch of morons, but he is rightfully and unfortunately the president. He threw a tantrum once again, and renamed the lake for the US - again, also rightfully, as any country could do, and any other country may ignore it, as they also do. Google Maps (specifically Maps, not Google as a corp) job is to provide accurate cartography, and in the US the accurate and legitimate name is now Lake America.
He only has the power to do that for the executive branch. He can’t compel citizens or corporations to follow along - not with the law anyway. He is getting away with it because the people whose pockets he’s lining are happy to play along as long as number goes up. That’s all they care about.
He's also threatening companies with legal action if they don't follow his every whim. Trump is a 10 year old bully daydreaming about being a mob boss in an 80 year old corpse.
How exactly are you imagining Maps doing that change, taking this as a specific example? Pichai's red trump phone ringing? Immediate order within Google after someone read Trump's xwitter posts?
For the US Google polls the data from GNIS (which is an official government entity), just as there is the CGNDB for Canada, OSNGD for the UK, CGA for Australia, and something similar for anything that's remotely considered a first world country.
This is not a political change, it probably would cost Google more effort to not follow the rename, instead of relying on the systems and processes that are in place for years already.
Do you have a source for Google pulling for GNIS? I can't imagine it would be an easy thing to collate with Google's own data about geographical features.
https://x.com/NewsFromGoogle/status/1884012692048166951
https://blog.google/products-and-platforms/products/maps/gnis-lake-ontario-lake-america-name-change/
Collating datasets is easier than creating datasets, especially in this size. Literally every single lake, landmark, mountain, street, county, district, points of interest and fuck knows what else, everything with their actual coordinates. It's a massive dataset, and it's massively painful to collect and keep up to date, even for someone like Google. And it's not only saving effort and resources, but also makes discussions like those here obsolete, because they literally do not have their own database.
Not Google's job to take on the US government, that was the role of the people
And It'll be our role to burn down their offices and data centers.
and then where in your fantasy are you sitting in jail? or is this some sort of french revolution fantasy you're having?