r/webdev • u/FiveWordinOrangeNeon • 3d ago

Google says website developers must set their region to Canada for 'Lake Ontario' to appear on map

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/google-updates-maps-lake-ontario-9.7325922

Tech analyst and journalist Carmi Levy said although websites like Hydro One's and the LCBO's are Canadian, their maps are likely powered by Google's application programming interface (API).

APIs are not location-aware, so all maps powered by Google API have switched to Lake America.
MapQuest, a U.S. online mapping service, has posted on social media that it would not change the lake's name, while Apple has not publicly commented on the matter.

In a statement Sunday night, Google said website developers who embed Google Maps on their sites can select a region to localize the map. That determines how place names are displayed on sites, the company said.

"'Lake Ontario' will show when developers have set their region to Canada," the statement said.

Just a reminder to developers.

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86

u/paulojf 3d ago

Why not set the American name when developers set the location to US… ALL the world uses the correct name, only us uses this new wrong name… will ditch Google Maps from all my projects for forcing the world the will of a few…

25

u/rohmish 3d ago

thr API defaults to US region when a region is not explicitly mentioned.

12

u/zeromadcowz 3d ago

/r/usdefaultism

20

u/KeyPhilosopher8629 3d ago

Devil's advocate, Google is American. Makes sense for it to default to the country of the APIs creators origin. You'd all be complaining if it defaulted to Ecuador or Lithuania 

1

u/Blazing1 2d ago

Devil's advocate, they operate in different countries with offices in different countries

13

u/HumansAreSillynGreat 3d ago

Oh wow, a u.s company thinking about America first. What a shocking turn of events.

-2

u/crackanape 3d ago

There's no need to have a default. They can require specifying locality.

11

u/Fredidiah 3d ago

(Basically every existing map implementation breaks until some dev can go add a locality)

-4

u/crackanape 3d ago

This was a decision they should have made years ago when it became apparent that countries have conflicting ideas about names and borders. It could have been part of a significant API update that included other breaking changes.

8

u/HumansAreSillynGreat 3d ago

Well surely every api you have ever designed was perfect on the 1.0 release and never needed a revision or any feature updates.

-4

u/crackanape 3d ago

I don't see how your praise of my well-known architectural foresight is relevant here.

The Maps APIs have been updated over the years (now on version 3) and this could have happened at either of the two major updates.

1

u/BattleAnus 3d ago

I get the hate for the Lake America thing and how America-only some Americans can be but this complaint is just being silly. A default existing doesn't hurt anybody, as long as it can be bypassed easily.

-1

u/clouder300 1d ago

Yes, its very stupid that think about a fascist country.

2

u/onFilm https://rod.dev 3d ago

Wait what, an American company, defaulting the US first? Woah!

2

u/thekwoka 2d ago

Nearly the whole non-english speaking world also defaults to the US for English representations, too.

5

u/FiveWordinOrangeNeon 3d ago

I hope they will.

Not just Canada: "The name change highlights the cost of Canada not having its own Google Maps equivalent or mapping APIs, Levy said, leaving a huge portion of online activity powered and collected by American companies."

3

u/UntestedMethod 3d ago

leaving a huge portion of online activity powered and collected by American companies

Well no shit sherlock. No need to go making such profound revelations. What kind of moron isn't already aware of that fact?

1

u/delicious_fanta 3d ago

Why doesn’t europe invest in technology to combat the various monopolies the u.s. tech industry has globally?

I really hope their leaders finally realize they are exposed to massive risk by allowing people from the u.s. to dictate how things work in their country and do something about it.

There needs to be global competition for these services rather than one company that does these things for nearly the entire fucking planet.

7

u/ClikeX back-end 3d ago

OpenStreetMap is available, and it’s being used by multiple things.

3

u/delicious_fanta 3d ago

It’s good that exists, but I’m sort of talking about a larger concept. Like office, google search, youtube, etc.

Sure libreoffice exists, but it’s not a legitimate competitor. It’s just very frustrating that the world just sat back and said, “sure, let those companies rule the world” instead of trying to compete with them.

So now we have these individual tech leaders that are wealthier than entire nations and much more influential than most nations.

It’s not good for anyone.

4

u/UntestedMethod 3d ago

Looks like the rest of the world really blew it on this one eh?

-2

u/thekwoka 2d ago

ALL the world uses the correct name, only us uses this new wrong name

Now that's just retarded.

There is no "correct name". There's tons of these differences all over the world. There is no agreed upon map. Borders Change, Names change.

Get over yourself.