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Google Maps renames “Lake Ontario” to “Lake America” even faster than US government (arstechnica.com)
submitted 10 hours ago by technocrit@lemmy.dbzer0.com to c/technology@lemmy.world
47 comments fedilink hide all child comments

Google rolled out the Lake America change on Saturday, while the official US government maps are still waiting.

all 49 comments
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[-] zebidiah@lemmy.ca 20 points 5 hours ago* (last edited 5 hours ago)

i wonder how many canadians that were sitting on the fence about de-googling are no longer sitting on that fence......

  1. start by changing your default search, google ai overviews made it useless anyways. check out duck duck go or startpage

  2. stop using google spyware browser (chrome and all chrome builds) and switch to firefox (or preferably a privacy focused fork, i.e. waterfox, librewolf

  3. learn linux...... quit windows

  4. self-host your own server and run your own localized, private apps, immich instead of google photos, vaultwarden instead of password manager, jellyfin instead of netflix, etc.

5.??????

  1. profit!!!!
[-] heartSagan5@lemmy.zip 3 points 1 hour ago

The problem is, “who wants to be a computer admin?” To which Google says, “I’ll be yours (and I’ll narc on you too for ads and IC).”

[-] zebidiah@lemmy.ca 1 points 4 minutes ago

Yeahhhhh.... I was actually just thinking about this the other day, and kinda realized that a lot of people in my dad's generation cosplayed as lawn maintenance landscapers in their spare time, I larp sysadmin

[-] unknownuserunknownlocation@kbin.earth 6 points 4 hours ago

Trump's dick cheese must be tasting pretty good considering how many people are going for it

[-] comador@lemmy.world 5 points 5 hours ago

Shared from Toronto, unsure of source, still funny.

[-] niisyth@lemmy.ca 12 points 1 hour ago

cute meme, but f*ck AI slop

[-] TheTechnician27@lemmy.world 65 points 9 hours ago* (last edited 9 hours ago)

So fwiw, the change was made official and updated in GNIS the day it changed on Google Maps, which uses GNIS behind the scenes. That same day, USGS said the name had taken effect in GNIS but that it was waiting for its maps to visually update.

I think this is a product of Google's infrastructure being faster to automatically update with GNIS changes. The fact they didn't step in to override it already shows that they're willing to go along with this; I don't think the fact it changed before USGS adds any significance to that bootlicking.

That is, I don't assume Google manually intervened to make this happen faster.

Still, fuck Google Maps. I'm glad people are waking up to how this level of hegemony over maps gives corporations too much power.

[-] colonelp4nic@lemmy.world 13 points 7 hours ago

I keep seeing this around. I've got friends at Google who have shared screenshots about the manual pull request (code change) that was made to update the name. They even have an internal shortlink pointing to that manual change since it's so dumb

[-] chaospatterns@lemmy.world 1 points 30 minutes ago

Why is a lake name stored in code versus a database?

[-] SnotFlickerman@lemmy.blahaj.zone 33 points 9 hours ago* (last edited 9 hours ago)

I wish this was talked about more. So much hay being made about this on the assumption that Google maintains their own database of locations instead of pulling from sources like GNIS like they actually do.

Fuck Google, but we don't need to make shit up to hate them. In fact, making shit up makes us seem crazy and hurts our position. These companies do enough real evil shit, we don't need to piss our time away on this non-issue.

Where's this fucking energy for Google removing sideloading from Android, for example. I've seen way more mainstream news about this one item on a fucking map than I have about the loss of sideloading and the loss of actual ownership of the devices we purchase.

[-] morto@piefed.social 3 points 2 hours ago

Where’s this fucking energy for Google removing sideloading from Android, for example.

To be fair, the average person doesn't know what sideloading is, while everyone will look at the map and see the changed name

[-] TheTechnician27@lemmy.world 15 points 9 hours ago* (last edited 8 hours ago)

It reminds me of this conspiracy that was circulating a few months back that Apple Maps had "deleted" cities and places in Lebanon to culturally erase it for Israel's invasion.

In reality (which you could see by e.g. looking at Reddit posts from a few years ago), Apple Maps' coverage of Lebanon was absolute unusable dogshit the entire time. There were complaints about how it wasn't even usable for basic navigation in Beirut. The city of Tyre (which was misspelled "Tyr") was still there despite being one of the hardest-hit cities by Israel's invasion.

Which was, to be fair, staggeringly incompetent, but it was provably true. Apple Maps' coverage sucked so badly that, at a surface level, it looked like somebody took an erase tool to a competent map.

I think a lot of people don't realize how automated corporate maps applications are. Which can be a weakness for crowd-sourced data like OpenStreetMap when there aren't enough contributors, but that democratization is also a huge benefit that anyone can see and fix issues. The main parts of Google Maps that aren't automated are points of interest, and those are kept up-to-date thanks to the network effect where e.g. business owners see value in maintaining their information or users feel like they're helping out (read: doing free labor for a trillion-dollar corporation).

[-] SnotFlickerman@lemmy.blahaj.zone 3 points 8 hours ago* (last edited 8 hours ago)

It's just a bit silly considering how these companies have been leveraging publicly available information and how automated most of their systems actually are. It's part of why customer service at many of them (not Apple so much I guess) is absolutely abysmal and they basically do their best to try to avoid to having a human being in the customer service loop at all. Automating almost all software and removing the human element has literally been the name of the game for 20 years at least.

I mean the original Google ranking algorithm itself was partially made by checking the publicly available information (via web scraping) of how many times a site had been linked to from other sites. And to keep it accurate, they had to keep scraping constantly to keep updating the publicly available data for their own purposes. All of which was automated as well, by the way.

[-] brookenium@feddit.online 89 points 10 hours ago

There's a reason they removed "Don't be Evil" from their corporate tenets. The almighty dollar comes first to them and they refuse to risk angering The Orange One.

[-] updn@lemmy.ca 3 points 2 hours ago

No, no no no no. They’re not afraid of angering him.

This is the Nerd Reich and they had front seats to his inauguration. THEY are the evil.

[-] muhyb@programming.dev 20 points 9 hours ago

Actually they just removed the "Don't" part.

[-] Hakuso@scribe.disroot.org 8 points 8 hours ago

I refer to them as "Be More Evil, Inc." now.

[-] gankouskhan@bookwyr.me 3 points 7 hours ago

Don't be less evil*

See "don't be evil" is still there

[-] Buddahriffic@lemmy.world 2 points 5 hours ago

Assuming they changed anything about their ideals and didn't just think "hey does having this here reduce suspicion as intended or raise it when it begs the question of how a tech company could even be evil when they aren't named 'Microsoft'?"

[-] DMCMNFIBFFF@lemmy.world 1 points 5 hours ago

Don't be evil to our shareholders or President Grump.

[-] bridgeenjoyer@sh.itjust.works 38 points 10 hours ago

Boot licking fascist cowards.

[-] Nurse_Robot@lemmy.world 42 points 10 hours ago

Gross

[-] ceenote@lemmy.world 23 points 10 hours ago* (last edited 10 hours ago)

I'd guess the calculus was something like:

Our users don't want this thing

Fuck em, we're a monopoly

the famously petty would-be dictator wants this thing

Do what he says, he could really hit our bottom line if he wants to

[-] abbiistabbii@piefed.blahaj.zone 15 points 9 hours ago* (last edited 9 hours ago)

"Fuck em, we're a Monopoly."

And while we're at it.

  • https://duckduckgo.com/: Google replacement, respects your privacy, AI features turn-off-able and completely optional.
  • https://proton.me/: gSuite replacement, Email, Cloud Storage, Docs, Calendar, Video Calls, Authenicator. Actually worth paying for.
[-] QuadratureSurfer@piefed.social 5 points 8 hours ago

Instead of recommending OpenStreetMap.org, I would suggest Cartes.app as the Google maps replacement (uses OSM data). It contains most features that Google Maps users are used to and will feel familiar to them. OpenStreetMap is more of the backend for mapping apps rather than a direct replacement for Google Maps.

Cartes for most features (satellite view, reviews, shareable links that work for anyone, etc.) and CoMaps for offline/driving directions.

[-] SnotFlickerman@lemmy.blahaj.zone 6 points 9 hours ago

I'd personally suggest Tuta over Proton simply because of the sketchiness of the Proton ownership and their conservative, business-first, citizens-second views.

[-] HumanOnEarth@lemmy.ca 19 points 9 hours ago

Today is GrapheneOS day for me.

And if they ever try to take that away, I'll get a fucking dumb flip phone and that'll be that.

Open source is critical to our future.

[-] vatlark@lemmy.world 8 points 9 hours ago

Mine arrived today. Ironic.

Also ironic that I had to buy a pixel, but i needed a new phone so I wanted something that gos and other distros could run on

[-] HumanOnEarth@lemmy.ca 6 points 8 hours ago

Oh don't apologize for buying their subsidized data collection devices and then completely disabling the reason they subsidize the devices 😂

It's a kick in the nuts to Google every time GrapheneOS is installed.

[-] willington@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 points 6 hours ago* (last edited 6 hours ago)

Single source hardware is a security liability. If Google does something to the hardware or firmware, the GrapheneOS project would be screwed. Google has already hobbled AOSP.

We cannot overly depend on Google's or any one company's good will.

I think GrapheneOS should think about gradually steering the project toward a basket of hardware companies. Shifting to Motorola is necessary in the near term, but the whole situation with Google's behavior needs to be a wake up call.

[-] some_kind_of_guy@lemmy.world 2 points 1 hour ago

Already, the pixel 11 line is out for graphene

[-] AlligatorBlizzard@sh.itjust.works 2 points 1 hour ago

They might be stuck with single source hardware from Motorola now, they announced recently there's a good chance they can't support the Pixel 11.

[-] zebidiah@lemmy.ca 1 points 5 hours ago

i just got a pixel 10 pro..... kinda wish i had got a samsung instead now

[-] ThePowerOfGeek@lemmy.world 11 points 9 hours ago

I'm fucking done with Google Maps and their brown-nosing bullshit. Disabled it (can't uninstall easily, otherwise I would). MapQuest from now on (or one of the other alternatives that has a spine).

Now to find a good alternative to Gmail (and go through that migration hassle). I've tried Proton Mail in the past. It was okay, but didn't blow me away.

[-] Grostleton@lemmy.dbzer0.com 8 points 8 hours ago* (last edited 8 hours ago)

Shizuku, activated with USB debugging (if you can't/won't root), and Canta will let you fully remove Gmaps (and any other google shitware) pretty easily.

I even used it to remove that Android System SafetyCore app that apparently keeps reinstalling itself if you uninstall via normal methods and it hasn't come back after roughly a year since removal so I'd say it's a pretty effective and simple method to set up, just make sure to read the notes the Canta dev added for certain apps to make sure you aren't going to break something you may still want.

[-] pivot_root@lemmy.world 4 points 5 hours ago

Shizuku is on the chopping block. One of the change requests being made to AOSP is blocking adb connections on the loopback interface, "for security".

[-] ThePowerOfGeek@lemmy.world 4 points 7 hours ago

Good info, thanks.

[-] TheCelticPirate@lemmy.world 8 points 8 hours ago

I like the Yelp integration with MapQuest. FlockHopper is good for finding routes that avoid flock cameras.

[-] EliteCloneMike@lemmy.zip 5 points 8 hours ago

I use Organic Maps and CoMaps mainly. Sometime Kagi Maps and FlockHopper (not sure what I under the hood of that one though). I prefer OSM generally.

[-] panda_abyss@lemmy.ca 14 points 10 hours ago

What is utter horse shit is that they care about compatibility except for this.

The fact that it broke tons of Canadian websites and Google neither cares nor bothered to investigate shows their priority of sucking up to the Trump admin over everything else.

Change your default search engine, delete Google apps that you can (I need fucking the Google app for authentication…), create a non-gmail account and start migrating to it (yes this sucks, yes it takes a long time to finish, there’s lots of degoogling info on this out there now).

[-] gressen@lemmy.zip 9 points 9 hours ago

Aegis authenticator work just as good as Google authenticator and you can transfer all your keys.

[-] panda_abyss@lemmy.ca 3 points 6 hours ago

I have to authenticate in the Google app sometimes though, not Google Authenticator, TOTP, or a passkey

[-] SnotFlickerman@lemmy.blahaj.zone 6 points 9 hours ago* (last edited 9 hours ago)

Aegis is tits and it makes it easy to transfer TOTP codes back and forth between Aegis and KeePassXC.

[-] Appoxo@lemmy.dbzer0.com 4 points 9 hours ago* (last edited 9 hours ago)

Weird. The local (german) version still shows as it should. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Edit: For now

[-] unknownuserunknownlocation@kbin.earth 1 points 4 hours ago

They're only changing it in the US.

[-] Appoxo@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 4 hours ago

Well...
Not quite. For the Gulf of mexico it shows "Gulf of America" as a subtitle.

this post was submitted on 01 Sep 2026
351 points (98.3% liked)

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