r/googlemapsshenanigans • u/vinceb75 • 2d ago
A cool guide about changing your Google Maps location names to a less-stupid version
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u/ALazy_Cat 2d ago
Just be located in a country that is not USA
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u/Jezbod 2d ago
Yup, just checked in the UK and all is well.
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u/paraworldblue 2d ago
I set mine to Canada, and it fixed Lake Ontario, but now the Gulf of Mexico says "Gulf of Mexico (Gulf of America)". Google is really insistent on degrading itself for the entire world, huh?
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u/bluespringsbeer 1d ago
Since the Gulf of Mexico doesn’t border Canada, when in Canada it shows the names from the countries that do.
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u/t_newt1 1d ago edited 1d ago
Didn't work for me on my phone. I even used a VPN and set my location to Canada and cleared out the cache. The lake still shows up with the wrong name.
I remember when Google was the place PhDs competed to get jobs and they were really proud of how hard it was to get hired and how intelligent their employees were. (I knew a few of those PhDs!) But this move is incredibly brain-dead and, honestly, it makes me really worried about the future of Google. How long can a brain dead company survive in a highly technical and competitive industry?
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u/StuD44 2d ago
My question is: Why does GMaps keep applying his nonsense?!
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u/Sudden_Juju 1d ago
They source all their information in the US from the Geographic Names Information System (GNIS) which is run by the federal government. For better or worse, it's keeping with their consistent policies.
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u/StuD44 1d ago
That legit should be illegal. Like, it's affecting everyone worldwide, not just US.
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u/Sudden_Juju 1d ago
I agree it's dumb as fuck, and IDK why other countries have "Lake America" in parentheses (likely because it's a US based country), but made illegal by whom?
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u/paraworldblue 2d ago
Trump is either doing some kind of favors for them or threatening to punish them
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u/bluespringsbeer 1d ago
How about people go to the ballot box instead of staying home because of Palestine?
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u/Bepehandle 2d ago
This is a lot of effort for something that doesn't matter in the slightest lol
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u/cheesenachos12 2d ago
The names of geological features doesn't matter in the slightest?
Would you care if the US Govt renamed every body of water to a random assortment of numbers?
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u/Bepehandle 22h ago
Nope, as long as they continued to work for navigating I wouldn't care in the slightest. All the land we currently have named on the planet had a different name at some point in time. It's all relative.
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u/cheesenachos12 13h ago
Well other people have reason to care. This change has direct costs of the labor and material costs of changing maps, signs, and the like. It also has social costs of harming the legitimacy of the U.S. government in the eyes of citizens and foreign countries alike.
What benefits may outweigh these costs?
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u/Bepehandle 10h ago
I never said there's any benefits, I just think it doesn't matter one way or another. Do it, don't do it, either way people shouldn't get so worked up over temporary crap.
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u/usernameisokay_ 1d ago
Indeed they don’t matter, that’s why the USA is now split in half vertically and called Greater United Mexican States and the other half is called east Canada, no one cares and this seems the best solution honestly.
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u/Bepehandle 1d ago
You could rename my home to "place for morons" and i wouldn't even bat an eye. Names are stupid because they only matter in the moment for navigating. In 200 years the world will have 59 different countries and no one will care. People are dumb.
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u/CartoonistOk9276 2d ago
how to do it on mobile