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al_borlandtoday at 9:36 PM2 repliesview on HN

I’m in the US, near the Canadian boarder, I see both names show up. Lake Ontario shows up larger and when zoomed out. Lake America shows up smaller as I zoom in. I suppose some of this could be a cacheing issue, hard to say.

At the end of the day a map provider has the responsibility to show the official names of places on a map. If it’s one name to the US and another name for the rest of the world, the pragmatic solution is to show the “right” name based on a user’s location.

This seems like a silly hill to die on, when whoever is in office next will likely revert the names of the lake and the Gulf of Mexico, unless they are deep in the Trump camp.

Messing with maps as a negotiation tactic seems rather boneheaded. It’s extremely disruptive, but blaming Google or Apple for any of this is a bad move, imo. There are much bigger fights to be had and they need to pick their battles. This isn’t it, and it will likely resolve itself in time, and should only impact those in the US, if done right.


Replies

marcosdumaytoday at 9:53 PM

> At the end of the day a map provider has the responsibility to show the official names of places on a map.

Not really. They have the responsibility to show the useful names. They are also free to show whatever the local bully forces them to.

Neither of those is necessarily the official name.

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vkoutoday at 9:43 PM

> It’s extremely disruptive, but blaming Google or Apple for any of this is a bad move, imo

They have the capacity to push back, instead of pre-emptively rolling over for an autocrat.

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