I suppose this was inevitable.
Mexico has followed through on its threat to sue Google after the tech giant switched to the name “Gulf of America” on its digital maps, President Claudia Sheinbaum announced at a Friday news conference.
Google Maps users in the U.S. began seeing the name “Gulf of America” in February following President Trump’s executive order to change the name within the federal government. Google Maps users in Mexico still see Gulf of Mexico, and users in other countries see both names displayed together.
Sheinbaum previously threatened to sue Google if the company did not respond to letters requesting that “Gulf of America” should only refer to the part of the gulf in the United States’ jurisdiction. The company said in a public statement and in a letter to Sheinbaum’s administration that it has long complied with official government sources when determining geographic features names on Google Maps.
“All we want is for the decree issued by the United States government to be complied with,” she said Friday. “The decree issued by the United States government regarding the Gulf of America names only the portion that corresponds to the continental shelf of the United States, not the entire gulf.”
In the same way that certain local buildings (Transco Tower, the Summit, Enron Field) will always be as I first learned about them, I will never call that body of water anything but the Gulf of Mexico. The NYT adds some details.
The Trump administration is well within its right to rename its own territory but the maritime zones that are under the control of Mexico or Cuba cannot be relabeled by the United States or anyone else, she said. “We would have no business in telling them to rename a state, a mountain, or a lake,” she added.
In February, Cris Turner, the vice president for government affairs and public policy at Google, sent a letter to the Mexican government justifying the change and confirming that people using Google Maps in Mexico would continue to see Gulf of Mexico.
“This is consistent with our normal operating procedure to reflect on our platforms geographic names prescribed by different authoritative government sources,” the letter said, including in places where those sources “may differ.”
The next day, Mexico’s foreign ministry said in another letter to Mr. Turner that relabeling the entire gulf, even for American users only, “exceeds the powers of any national authority or private entity.” Mexico, the ministry said, would take any legal action it deemed appropriate.
Ms. Sheinbaum did not say on Friday when or where exactly her administration brought the lawsuit against Google but she added that there had already been a “first resolution.” The presidency’s legal office told The New York Times that the suit was filed in a Mexican court in late March.
The argument that the US government can only rename that which it controls seems pretty solid to me. I would hope that Google recognizes that and comes to a settlement agreement. If that results in an orange toddler temper tantrum, too bad. They could have done the right thing in the first place and maybe made it less of a big deal. This is what you get for bending the knee. BBC and The Verge have more.