uspol, google maps
Google showing the Gulf of Mexico as "Gulf of America" for users in the US, likely really is consistent with their usual internal policy - similar locale-specific differences exist for many places in their dataset.
Showing *both* names for users outside of US/Mexico, however, likely *isn't* consistent with their internal policies... and it smells of obeying in advance.
uspol, google maps
@StroomAfwaarts The only policy I can think of would be that in the case of shared (legal) ownership over a region, it is named by all of the owners' local names for it.
Problem is, I am not aware of them applying this kind of rule for any other region.
re: uspol, google maps
@joepie91 I definitely agree. Considering the names of international bodies of water are regulated by the International Hydrographic Organization, there is no reason other countries should even care about what the US calls it.
If anything, only the US version of Google Maps should show both names, to signal that there are two regulating bodies that disagree.
uspol, google maps
@joepie91 yeah, I just checked Svalbard, consistently called Spitsbergen in the Netherlands, but there is no "Spitsbergen (Svalbard) " in Google Maps, like there is "Golf van Mexico (Golf van Amerika)".
So, what's the naming policy here?