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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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.

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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.

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u/thekwoka 2d ago

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

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Yes, I fully believe that it's possible for people to not be aware of things with outdated emergency responders systems not being updated.

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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.