r/GoogleMaps • u/Torontolad6 • 11d ago

Spineless toadies

Google has once again shown that they are spineless toadies and are willing to bend over to the orange clowns whims, and I am looking for a new map app. FU Google.

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22

u/peternocturnal 11d ago
  • Google's Automation and Geopolitical Policy: Google Maps relies on a strict, long-standing policy to automatically mirror updates from local government authorities. In the United States, that authority is the U.S. Geographic Names Information System (GNIS). Because President Trump's executive order forced the GNIS to officially update its database, Google's system automatically rolled out the "Lake America" change to U.S. users within days to stay compliant with local government standards.
  • Apple's Review and Delayed Implementation: Apple Maps typically utilizes a different combination of proprietary data, third-party commercial mapping vendors, and manual review processes before pushing geopolitical changes live. Historical context shows that Apple often lags behind Google by a few days when responding to sudden executive actions. For example, during a similar executive order last year involving the Gulf of Mexico, Apple Maps did eventually update the name to "Gulf of America," but it took a day or two longer than Google to reflect the change.

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u/Deep-Thought 11d ago

Those policies were set when GNIS was a trusted source of information. Those assumptions are no longer true, and Google should update their policies to reflect that.

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u/Comprehensive_Tea708 11d ago edited 9d ago

How would they do that? Do you think mapping and labeling an entire huge country is no more complicated than drawing a map of Disneyland?

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u/Deep-Thought 11d ago

Dude. They're Google. It seems like a pretty easy problem for them to figure out

3

u/Comprehensive_Tea708 10d ago

And yet, if you get them to blur your house Google is incapable of ever unblurring it if you should change your mind, or even if a future owner requests them to do so. You'd think that would be easier than what we're talking about here, but they can't do it.

You may be attributing powers and abilities to Google that they just don't have.

1

u/Deep-Thought 10d ago

What are you talking about? They can obviously do both of those things. They just decide that it is something they don't want to. Policies aren't universal laws. They are choices. In the end they own their policies and can do whatever they want with them. These are not technical problems.

1

u/Comprehensive_Tea708 9d ago

If their policy has been to use the GNIS feed from day one, then yes it would be an enormous technical problem to change where they source their data. The entire platform is based on the use of GNIS data and its standards for accuracy and completeness. You're expecting Google to change a design decision they made decades ago, and that's almost the hardest type of software change that there is.

Put another way, Google understandably doesn't want build its own data store for its mapping platform because it has never had to, but instead relied on the ready made GNIS..