Mexican President Threatens to Sue Google Over 'Gulf of America' Label on Maps | Common Dreams
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Mexican President urges Google to reconsider renaming the Gulf of Mexico to 'Gulf of America' on its maps feature at Trump's demand, and threatens legal action.

The president of Mexico on Thursday expressed hope that Google “reconsiders” its decision to change its online maps to reflect U.S. President Donald Trump’s claim that he has the authority to change the name of the Gulf of Mexico.

Shortly after taking office, Trump issued an executive order announcing he was changing the name of the body of water to the Gulf of America.

For U.S. users of Google Maps, the gulf was listed as the Gulf of America as of Thursday. Google, whose CEO attended Trump’s inauguration along with other tech moguls, said last month it has “a long-standing practice of applying name changes when they have been updated in official government sources.”

But Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum warned Thursday that her government “will file a civil suit” against Google if it does not revert back to labeling the international body of water the Gulf of Mexico.

  • driving_crooner@lemmy.eco.brEnglish
    40·
    1 day ago

    Mexican courts? Good luck getting an American company to comply.

    Why not? Brazilian courts ordered Twitter to ban some people, Twitter refused, court treated to jail Brazilian Twitter legal representatives, Twitter closed their Brazilian office to shield itself from Brazilian courts, Brazilian courts ordered ISPs to block Twitter because they had no legal representatives on the country, after a couple of weeks without Brazilian access Twitter bow down, rehired their legal representatives and complied with Brazilian court orders.

    Don’t see why Mexican courts couldn’t do the same with Google Maps.

    • ERROR: Earth.exe has crashed@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
      48·
      1 day ago

      By “comply”, I mean like getting them to revert the map rename. Kicking them out and blocking them isn’t really getting them to “comply”

      By contrast, if the US government wanted Google to do something, they could storm their headquarters and get the government tech people to go in the servers and change it (Edit: after obtaining a court order to do so, obviously).

      • Dragonstaff@leminal.spaceEnglish
        10·
        22 hours ago

        if the US government wanted Google to do something, they could storm their headquarters and get the government tech people to go in the servers and change it.

        Bwahahahahahahainhalehahahahahahaa

        Thanks, I needed that. Whatever movies you’re watching are terrible.

        Forcing your way into Google to have “government techs” change something is NCIS level ridiculous. Conceivably they might get a court order to “force” Google to change. Funnily enough, the US and Mexico have the exact same levers to make a company do what they want. The US has more power to push those levers though.

        • phlegmy@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
          7·
          21 hours ago

          We’ll see who’s laughing after the government breaks through all of Google’s firewalls and hacks their mainframe!
          They’re gonna need a lot of cyber-tape if they want any chance of stopping all the data from spilling through their firewalls.
          And who knows how google would handle a cyber-nuke.

      • funkless_eck@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
        9·
        1 day ago

        Mexico is a big country, Google has shareholders who demand line goes up, people use maps to advertise (“map pack” “local SEO” and brand tie-ins)…