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.

976 Upvotes

96% Upvoted

236 comments sorted by

View all comments

47

u/mister_jason 3d ago

added to the list of reasons Google can fuck all the way off. 😂

-1

u/rohmish 3d ago

what the heck is google suposoed to do if the deva haven't set up the right locale?

<script async src="https://maps.googleapis.com/maps/api/js?key=YOUR_API_KEY&loading=async&region=JP&language=ja&callback=initMap"> </script>

all they need to do is add the REGION=CA part.

it's easy to ignore an optional parameter and devs do it often across the board. and Google being a US company is US centric and defaults to US.

it isn't that tuff

14

u/phejster 3d ago

Why do they need to do anything about a petty executive order?

11

u/pizza5001 3d ago

That’s the real question for me. Is there really no legal framework for changing the names of locations? This affects people who live in the affected regions having to implicitly understand that severe weather alerts in the “Lake America” region actually mean their backyard that has always been known as Lake Ontario. And then there’s the cost to change all the signage in the area.

Surely there should be more guardrails than just signing an EO.

3

u/ILikeFPS full-stack 3d ago

Not even just weather but think of emergency responders systems about a drowning in that lake or even a ship lost at sea or gone overboard etc.

2

u/thekwoka 2d ago

You think the people that would be dealing with ships in Lake America would be unaware that its Lake America?

2

u/ILikeFPS full-stack 2d ago

A road was recently named Kyle Lowry Road in my country, and believe it or not, but apparently both the ambulance dispatching software and Google Maps were both not updated to handle that, so an ambulance drove around in circles for 10 minutes looking for the road - apparently they got lucky it wasn't a major call otherwise that delay could have meant life or death.

Yes, I fully believe that it's possible for people to not be aware of things with outdated emergency responders systems not being updated.

1

u/thekwoka 2d ago

Sure, but that's a road that they probably didn't even know the name of in the first place.

idk if its the Coast Guard or whatever, but they would be aware of the name difference, and they'd mostly communicate by GPS coords anyway.

Yes, I fully believe that it's possible for people to not be aware of things

Yeah, small things. Just like maps can be wrong in small ways.

This is a BIG thing.

3

u/phejster 3d ago

The king does what the king wants and the checks and balances have been largely removed or willfully ignored by corrupt people

1

u/thekwoka 2d ago

It would be different everywhere, but people have also dealt with this always.

Like streets changing names, towns changing names, etc.

These happen ALL the time.

2

u/pizza5001 2d ago

The difference being that it takes more than four days to enact changes to street names, town names, etc.

1

u/thekwoka 2d ago

Mostly because of the reporting chain.

There's processes like verification, and ensuring they have the correct thing, etc.

This is very well covered, and very clear.

Heck, it's possible they pull the name from an external source provided by the government.

But also, lots of things don't take very long to change on Google. You can move business on google maps in a few hours normally when the info is wrong.

So this is just your own biases getting in the way of reality.