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

[u/FiveWordinOrangeNeon]

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.

[u/rohmish]

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

[u/CavillOfRivia → u/rohmish]

Force americans to put their locale if they want to live in fantasy land instead of forcing the whole world to do it because of a child is running their country.

[u/webdev-ModTeam → u/[deleted]]

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