IIRC Google shows different names and borders depending on the location you’re accessing it from. They just follow whatever the local government thinks is right.
I’ve seen this said several places, but haven’t seen anyone give a concrete example (at all, let alone on such a scale). I suppose there’s locations in Ukraine/Russia where it happens, though I suspect that Google isn’t just going to side with Russia on that one
I think I heard it in a YouTube video. The specific example was a contested region between India and China. Depending on your location Google showed you different borders, each time according to the country’s official point of view
In Portugal, it appears as “Gulf of Mexico (Gulf of America)”
In Germany, it is still “Golf von Mexiko”.
Edit: when you zoom in, it is the same as in Portugal.
That has to be illegal…
Same in Canada.
Slow your horses there partner. That sounds an awful lot like facts and logic. We don’t do that stuff here, so quit using that brain of yours. Take the outrage bait and join in on this circlejerk.
You’re right. No more braining!
Yes, big international companies bowing down to local authoritarian governments… nothing outrageous going on there in the world. This definitely hasn’t helped dictators remain in power or target citizens, jerk away!
Use that logic to form sarcastic, misconstrued, and dangerous viewpoints and throw facts out the window! How fun!
Lad. Google has always done this.
You access Google maps from different locations and you’ll see names and border changes.
Because, and this might surprise a sheltered yanks such as yourself. There’s a whole world outside your borders, and different cultures call different locations different names.
You guys have got way bigger fish to fry than this.
Live in the south Bud, your yank shit can go out the window. We have bigger fish to fry than the worlds largest company that influences elections and controls our data and produces algorithm’s to ensure our behavior?
The point is Google has always done this shit, just because someones been pissing in your cornflakes every morning doesn’t mean you can’t get upset when they eat asparagus. Or better yet, maybe care they’re pissing in your shit to begin with?
It’s not about “bigger fish to fry”, ain’t no one frying fish in this fucker. We’re just talking and spreading awareness, idk wtf you’re doing here besides complaining about people being aware (this is a degoogle community after all).
(this is a degoogle community after all).
And there’s way more important thing to complain about when it comes to Google then something as routine as this.
The only thing you are spreading awareness about, is how sheltered you are.
This same thing has been done for the Persian/Arabian Gulf, something that I can’t help be suspicious that it’s never been brought up.
Holy hell, talk about projection with your sheltered remarks. Did you try searching for persian arabian gulf before commenting? “I haven’t seen anyone complaining about one thing, so no one should be complaining about this thing.” You’re seriously saying this?
“I deem anyone not agreeing with me as a sheltered yank, I am definitely not a sheltered southerner with a bias”
I wish I could actually add anything to this conversation but your last response was just a “nuh uh!” with more insults sprinkled in (I guess to make you feel better about yourself? how’s that going?). You’ve wasted time proclaiming this is a waste of time. Glad you got bigger fish to fry, can’t wait for what great subject we should be focusing on with our comments.
I guess everyone would benefit from seeing your comment history and all the great fish frying you’re doing. Us plebs talking about such mundane things is such a waste since you’ve highlighted it for the community. I imagine there’s a whole plethora of comments you made about Google that will help lead us into a better future.
Typical sheltered yank. Only complaining when something affects you.
great subject we should be focusing on with our comments
Something actually relevant to Google? And not standard operating procedure.
I would hate to see what would happen when you learn about how Google maps handles all the disputed borders in the world.
There’s no thought in our government, so they’re already messing that one up. Also, it’s just the president who cares (and I guess some people who voted for him), I’d imagine a majority of people here aren’t calling it the new name (or even know the name changed).
I’ve always heard locals just call it “the Gulf.”
I’d really love for someone to come up with a phone OS that I could use on my cell phone. Mine runs on Android and I want to dump all things Google! I read that they have an exclusive deal with reddit where ALL data on reddit would be made available to them for training their AI algorithms. I went on perplexity.ai to check for this and here’s the response I received to my query: The deal between Reddit and Google to share data for AI training and search purposes will likely have significant impacts on Reddit user privacy:
- Increased data sharing: Google will have exclusive access to Reddit’s Data API, allowing them to collect real-time, structured content from the platform13. This means more user-generated content and activity data will be shared with a third party.
- Enhanced user profiling: Google will use this data to improve its AI models and search capabilities, potentially leading to more accurate user profiling across Google’s services36.
- Potential for more personalized advertising: With access to Reddit’s data, Google may be able to create more detailed user profiles, potentially leading to more targeted advertising both on and off Reddit26.
- Reduced anonymity: While Reddit has traditionally allowed for relative anonymity, this data sharing could make it easier to connect Reddit activity with other online identities13.
- Increased scrutiny of user content: As Reddit seeks to maintain its value for AI training, there may be stricter moderation and potential removal of certain types of content or communities4.
- Changes to user agreements: Reddit may update its privacy policy and user agreement to reflect this new data sharing arrangement, potentially granting themselves broader rights to use and share user data6. It’s important to note that while Reddit claims it does not sell personal information to third parties, this deal represents a significant change in how user data is shared and utilized23. Users concerned about privacy may need to be more cautious about the information they share on the platform and may want to review their privacy settings regularly. P.S.: Ignore the weird numbers as those are reference links. I copy-pasted this stuff.
To be fair:
I’m American and my phone is set up in the US with region being the US.
For me it’s extra strange. If I zoom out, I see “Gulf of Mexico (Gulf of America)”. However when I zoom in it changes to just “Guild of America”.
I’m American also in the US.
You have to zoom in sooo much too for it to say Gulf of Mexico (Gulf of America). Weird. Makes no sense why Google would do this except to schmooze up to Little-Hands Trump.
If you zoom in to 1m resolution and then slowly zoom out, you’ll see the name change back and forth several times. Very odd.
So it’s as stable as our government right now?
It’s the same for europeans, just in a different language.
The irony is that it doesn’t specify which America.
Gulf of America.
Don’t catch me slipping tho.
The rixh are trying to achieve world domination before we collectively strip them of their excess wealth to fix wealth inequality and dethrone them.
I wish i were kidding…
Nothing will meaningfully improve until the rich fear for their lives
Planet America, orbiting the American sun, in the galaxy called America
The Galaxy of (truth, Justice, and) the American Way!
When will Lemmy users stop talking about politics. It’s getting old fast
Anything but google.
Fuck Google and Samsung and everyone else who is preinstalled on my phone from the factory. I switched my phone OS to an AOSP GSI without the Google mobile services. Will probably be switching to WordPress from Blogger.
You should probably do some research on WordPress before migrating. Personally I wouldn’t touch WordPress with somebody else’s 10ft pole right now, the drama is an extreme turnoff. I’ve tried every AI chat bot except Automattics because I’m not interested in their games. Plenty of other great blogging platforms to choose from.
I mentioned it because it is the closest thing to Blogger.
That’s probably true and totally fair. I’ve heard good things about Ghost lately. Personally I’m looking into SSG’s for a new blog, a bit of setup but after that I really like the workflow. I’m trying out Zola right now. Good luck!
How about Concrete5 instead?
Though there’s an option to write Pandoc-based static site blog.
I wonder how location dependent it is?
Time for a repeat comment: Organic Maps does everything Google Maps does (except traffic conditions), and is FOSS. Please encourage places to contribute business information to Open Street Maps.
Talking about FOSS; I prefer OsmAnd because its licence is GPLv3, as opposed to the Apache 2 licence from Organic Maps.
Yup, big OsmAnd fan, too. We use it for backpacking and biking, but have found OM to be more driver friendly, which is why I recommended it here.
I think this is important. That said, traffic info is the whole ballgame for many people. People who live, work, and drive in metro areas frequently use map applications even when driving everyday routes to avoid traffic.
I don’t see Google/Waze/Apple maps getting any less popular unless there is a FOSS alternative that includes live traffic, which does not seem possible while remaining free. People will choose free every time, especially since Google maps works so well.
Personally, I would pay some amount for a privacy-minded alternative, something like OrganicMaps with live traffic. But I doubt it could ever attain the user base it would need to provide accurate traffic info.
Yea, I really wish I had more spare time. Algorithms like this are an area of expertise for me, and I’d love to build an anonymized service that works with Organic Maps. It’s annoying when I know it is something I could make that would support high volume, but just don’t have time for (mainly because of all the ongoing optimization it would require).
“Except traffic” is not a little thing. It’s like putting up an ad for a house with all the features you’d expect, except a roof.
With my daily commute, there are a dozen routes I can take and traffic conditions make it so that from day to day, there can be an hour difference between different routes. It’s literally the only reason I use navigation apps over a cheap GPS unit with no live online connection requirement to navigate.
Traffic condition can only be provided if you track millions of phones. I don’t want that, so I opt out. I don’t want Google to manage traffic for me.
Or you can do it like News stations do and just use a fucking camera feed and police acanner to have someone say “hey - there’s a lot of cars at Interstate 99 and Main” or “There’s reports of a wreck at 300 Elm street”.
Traffic reporting doesn’t require device-level tracking.
to have someone
In order to do this at scale, that’s a lot of someones who all need to be paid. You’d need several people, per city, to manually review traffic cameras and manually issue reports.
Unless you want to pay $200/mo for traffic updates, you can’t do this using humans.
Growing up, we had 5 TV stations and 20 radio stations that managed to do it just off of cereal advertisements. I’d gladly pay 5 bucks a month for it, and with millions of people in the metro area just having 1% of people use a $5/month service you’d be looking at 6 figures a month, which is plenty to pay for the service.
The only way to know if it would work would be to roll the dice and make a startup. You’ll need enough cash to cover a year or two of projected operations, the capital to develop the application and infrastructure in addition to the money required to advertise the service.
At the same time you have to realize that your proposition for potential customers is ‘You can pay us $5 to get the service that Google gives you for free and it only works in this one metro area.’ De-googling is a popular topic on nerd social media but the average person would gladly trade all of their privacy to pay less money.
If we could magic wand a company into existence and capture all of the privacy focused customer base in a large metro area then yeah, the company could pay the operating expenses. But going from ‘This is a cool idea’ to ‘We have a successful service that has a positive cash flow’ is a hard, capital intensive, process.
Hahaha I thought Google was benevolently collecting my personal data for my own good. I consented right? /s
Organic Maps:
Organic maps updates its dataset once a month or so. It will eventually be updated to the gulf of America, as it is now, technically named the gullf of America in America. See discussion here: https://community.openstreetmap.org/t/gulf-of-america-gulf-of-mexico/124571
Organic Maps is really cool :-)
Yeah, it’s even better than GMaps for me, because GMaps doesn’t have bike navigation (where I live) while Organic Maps has all the bike lanes marked and navigatable.
Yeah it’s way better for biking and walking. I also find the map a lot more coherent, with GMaps I often had to resort to the satellite view to see what’s going on.
