undefined | Better HN

0 pointsandix1y ago0 comments

Isn’t Google Maps blocked in Russia anyway? Crimea is a different story, as many countries recognize it to be in some kind of limbo and treat it as neither Russian nor Ukrainian.

I think Yandex (Russian Google) removed borders completely from their maps. Also because it’s impossible to figure out where the Russian government would like them to be. Might change on a daily basis.

Google maps added the „gulf of America“ to their US version, because anywhere else it’s still the Gulf of Mexico (even in iOS autocorrect, it changed it correctly to uppercase).

0 comments

int_19h1y ago

Google did this way back, sometime in 2016 IIRC, before they were blocked in Russia. I'm not really sure why they still keep going with this esp. since they still show the entirety of Donbas as Ukrainian, and it has been occupied for just as long as Crimea has been.

Yandex censorship around this is really amusing. They did indeed drop all mentions of countries and borders everywhere, for one thing. But also in Alice (their LLM chatbot), it's to the point where if you ask it to prepare a road trip from Sochi to Bucharest and describe the route in detail including which countries it passes through, it refuses to answer.

riffraff1y ago

the "gulf of america" thing is Google pandering to Trump, they originally had a policy of only using the popular name in a given locale.

> if a ruler announced that henceforth the Pacific Ocean would be named after her mother, we would not add that placemark unless and until the name came into common usage.

https://publicpolicy.googleblog.com/2008/04/how-google-deter...

neuronexmachina1y ago

I think they mostly started with geolocation-dependent names in the early 2010s, e.g. Kashmir and Palestine.

riffraff1y ago

that's different, they had location-dependent names at the time of this article too, the issue is specifically about the fact that even if you have location-dependent names you'd use the name that is commonly used in that location, not an arbitrary regulation name.

owlninja1y ago

I thought they used the Geographic Names Information System (GNIS) from the USGS. If this buffoonery does pass, it will reflect in the government official data source - and thus on Google maps?

1 more reply

notpushkin1y ago

> Isn’t Google Maps blocked in Russia anyway?

As far as I know, no it’s not? (Haven’t been to Russia for about a year now, but I haven’t heard about any blocks from my friends.)

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse

0 comments

int_19h1y ago

riffraff1y ago

the "gulf of america" thing is Google pandering to Trump, they originally had a policy of only using the popular name in a given locale.

> if a ruler announced that henceforth the Pacific Ocean would be named after her mother, we would not add that placemark unless and until the name came into common usage.

https://publicpolicy.googleblog.com/2008/04/how-google-deter...

neuronexmachina1y ago

I think they mostly started with geolocation-dependent names in the early 2010s, e.g. Kashmir and Palestine.

riffraff1y ago

owlninja1y ago

I thought they used the Geographic Names Information System (GNIS) from the USGS. If this buffoonery does pass, it will reflect in the government official data source - and thus on Google maps?

1 more reply

notpushkin1y ago

> Isn’t Google Maps blocked in Russia anyway?

As far as I know, no it’s not? (Haven’t been to Russia for about a year now, but I haven’t heard about any blocks from my friends.)

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse