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points by mapontosevenths 17 hours ago | 0 comments

"By saying "common", we mean to include names which are in widespread daily use, rather than giving immediate recognition to any arbitrary governmental re-naming. In other words, 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. "

They violated their own policy with the gulf then.

[–] lallysingh 17 hours ago

Same name, but the company is quite different. What of that old Google is left now?

[–] doginasuit 16 hours ago

This is an interesting question to ask of any company. Every company over a long period is a Ship of Theseus. Google started out as a rowboat and now it is an ocean liner.

Investment in product quality, "Don't be evil", everything that set a company apart and allowed it to rise, it lasts only as long as it is preserved in a way that resists decay.

Is there anything left of the rowboat? I'm at the point where I am actively trying to shut Google out of my life to the degree that it is possible. And yet it is still not Microsoft. I catch a glimmer of the old google in a product release now and then.

[–] jppope 16 hours ago

To quote Christopher Nolan: “You either die a hero, or live long enough to see yourself become the villain.”

[–] virgil_disgr4ce 16 hours ago

Fun fact, according to C-Nol himself, his brother (Jonathan Nolan) wrote that line

[–] redwood 14 hours ago

And as a reminder to folks he's the writer of (the newer era) Westworld which if you haven't seen the full first season really turns into an incredible mind bender

[–] dinkblam 13 hours ago

That show should have died the hero, i.e. after season one.

[–] PaulDavisThe1st 12 hours ago

S2 was reasonably OK, IMO. But that was it. And all their talk of having a fantastic entire story laid out right from the start? I don't believe a word of it. There's no way they had thought up Rehobaum or whatever it was called back when they started work on S1.

[–] goodmythical 15 hours ago

I hear there's a janitor using the handle of one of the original paddles as a mop handle.

It's only there because it wasn't inventoried and so not lost in the purge.

[–] coef2 17 hours ago

The last two words of their old motto "don't be evil"

[–] freecodeio 17 hours ago

only the 2 founders, which seems have become quite out of touch lately

[–] nervai 17 hours ago

"The United Nations is a transparently antisemitic organisation" - Google Co Founder

https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2025/07/08/sergey-...

[–] flir 16 hours ago

He's a peach

https://edition.cnn.com/2026/09/29/politics/sergey-brin-cali...

[–] vigilantpuma 12 hours ago

Trying to defeat a badly designed tax that even the Democrats aren’t aligned is evidence of him being a bad person? I think you can probably do better.

[–] embedding-shape 12 hours ago

Yes, actively working against "wealth tax" while you're wealthy, does indeed make you a bad person. A good person realize they're ahead of others, and try to help them rise as well, even if it means less wealth for them. It's called "greed" if you're looking for a specific name of this concept.

[–] WarmWash 11 hours ago

It took me a while to learn that giving money to the government isn't the highest form of good, despite also being a necessity to some degree. In fact I'm not even sure if it could make the top 10 of best ways to give money. But trust me when I was younger I definitely acted in that belief.

Like greedy Brin here has donated around $4B to charity that has gone to all manner of public good. Philanthropic organizations like his tend to be pretty efficient with getting good bang for their buck.

Had he given it to the government, which I'm sure you would call reason for celebration, well some of it would have gone to helping people directly, but most would have gone into protracted bureaucracy where just the rind ends up at the final objective. I'm actually pretty sure you yourself could write a decent list of government expenses that you would not want that money to go to.

In fact if you wrote a list of things that you would like it to go to, I'm pretty confident it would have very high overlap with what Brin does give to.

So what again are we trying to call out here? He's greedy?

[–] vigilantpuma 6 hours ago

Again, it’s a bad tax. Judge this on the merits, not merely on the fact that it’s a wealth tax and therefore good prima facie.

[–] JuniperMesos 9 hours ago

Nah the actual bad people are the people calling for the tax, who are primarily motivated by populist resentment of the visibly successful, and who don't have a good sense of what the actual problems in society are or how to actually fix them.

[–] freecodeio 12 hours ago

what's your rank on forbes top billionaires?

[–] Teever 9 hours ago

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44521137

It was dismaying to see this flagged so fast. When I reached out to the moderators about it they felt that it should remain flagged for reasons that seemed dubious and inconsistent imho.

[–] hparadiz 13 hours ago

He's right.

[–] hn_throwaway_99 15 hours ago

Not just out of touch, but downright psychopathic in my opinion. I used to greatly admire Larry Page. He seemed like a really smart, driven, level-headed guy. When the news came out that he was basically fine with AI wiping out humanity, as it would just be the natural evolution of intelligence, and to fight against that would be "speciesist", all I good think was "what a psycho".

And I really don't think I'm exaggerating Page's opinion on this, though I'm happy to be corrected if I'm wrong.

[–] nextaccountic 13 hours ago

I'm willing to bet he's speciesist in relation to actual, existing species of other animals

[–] ctmlr 12 hours ago

Extreme wealth seems to cook people's brains.

[–] munk-a 11 hours ago

Counter point - accumulating extreme wealth seems to require a cooked brain. I genuinely believe that level headed people are unable to reach more than a few million in accumulated wealth as they'll clearly see how much more that money would benefit others compared to themselves.

[–] ethbr1 5 hours ago

Counter counter point - we've constructed a society that provides excess rewards to people with cooked brains and antisocial behavior

[–] redwood 14 hours ago

Incredible back story here if I can trust Gemini on this as that dates back to over 10 years ago when Musk accused Larry Page of being too obsessed with bringing about AI and hence co-founds OpenAI... the irony of course being that OpenAI raced ahead while Google has been conservative

[–] LightBug1 15 hours ago

I'm still calling the axing of Google Reader the jump the shark moment!

[–] rickdeckard 16 hours ago

It seems their actual policy is "the policy of Primary Local Usage":

"Under this policy, the English Google Earth client displays the primary, common, local name(s) given to a body of water by the sovereign nations that border it. If all bordering countries agree on the name, then the common single name is displayed (e.g. "Caribbean Sea" in English, "Mar Caribe" in Spanish, etc.). But if different countries dispute the proper name for a body of water, our policy is to display both names, with each label placed closer to the country or countries that use it."

Which basically means "multiple names until all bordering countries agree on the same name", if I'm not mistaken

[–] Gormo 16 hours ago

The problem here is that the "primary, common, local" name used in a country sometimes conflicts with what specific government institutions in those countries may "officially" use.

In the situation with the Gulf, it's unambiguously true that the "primary, common, local" name used in the US by English-speaking Americans is "Gulf of Mexico", but they decided to adhere to an artificial name change declared by a political figure, whose authority to make that "official" only extends to a single branch of a single level of government.

[–] amiga386 14 hours ago

Not only that, but the only area he's authorised to name is a stretch of the US coastline and its EEZ.

He has no authority to name international bodies of water - i.e the large part in the centre where Google should be writing "Gulf of Mexico" because that's its name.

But he does have the ability to cause trouble for the giant corporations based in his country that serve map images to most of the rest of the world. The giant corporations also see that he grants favours for fealty. So it's actually the unofficial power he has that's the problem, rather than what's within his legal remit.

[–] rickdeckard 16 hours ago

> "In the situation with the Gulf, it's unambiguously true that the "primary, common, local" name used in the US"

And that's my point. It depends on how "primary" or "common" is defined, the article has no definition of it. Who gets to decide that, Google?

The easy (and predictable) cop-out is to follow a governments definition of what is "the expected primary and common name", and then show that name in brackets.

The only restriction this "definition" seems to set is that your country needs to be adjacent to the landmark to define its name, so "a ruler" cannot decide to rename e.g. Australia unless he is either "the ruler" of Australia or of a country adjacent to it.

And we're back to square one.

EDIT: Yes, I also read this sentence: "By saying "common", we mean to include names which are in widespread daily use, rather than giving immediate recognition to any arbitrary governmental re-naming.".

The question remains how to quantify "widespread daily use".

It creates room to justify against an immediate change of a name, but doesn't define when this criteria is reached.

And from all I see, all this doesn't seem to matter anyway, because a new local naming will anyway be added in brackets (see Gulf of Mexico). What am I missing?

[–] CrazyStat 16 hours ago

The article does have definitions of both primary and common, though:

> By saying "primary", we aim to include names of dominant use, rather than having to add every conceivable local nickname or variation. By saying "common", we mean to include names which are in widespread daily use, rather than giving immediate recognition to any arbitrary governmental re-naming. In other words, 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.

[–] Gormo 15 hours ago

Which is consistent with Wikipedia's naming policy, and the Wikipedia community already puts in the effort to sort out what primary names to use for things.

If Google doesn't want to try to discern the proper "primary, local, common" names on their own, they do worse than just using Wikipedia's names and call it a day.

[–] OskarS 16 hours ago

It's a very lawyerly distinction you're making here that's willfully blind to what's really going on. The common-sense reading "primary, common, local name" is that it should be called the Gulf of Mexico, as that is what it is called in the USA.

If the nutso president of Turkmenistan decided one day that the Caspian Sea's real name was the Turkmen Sea, there's absolutely no way that Google Maps would rename it on their maps. The reason they renamed it in this case is not because "well, the government said so, so we have no choice!". It's (obviously!) done to not piss of Trump, and pissing off Trump would be bad for their business. They can hide behind lawyerly arguing all they want, but that is the real reason.

[–] ElevenLathe 15 hours ago

I'm not so sure on the Turkmen Sea example. Google is (trying to) sidestep this issue as much as possible by making the name on the map depend on your physical location, language and localization settings, or both. They could easily make the Caspian Sea say Turkmen Sea only in Turkmenistan, and probably would if they wanted to keep doing business in Turkmenistan. This is already how it works for Lake Ontario: if I access from the US, it says "Lake America", but if I VPN to somewhere in Europe, it says "Lake Ontario (Lake America)".

In terms of lawyerly distinctions, I would actually argue that there is still no legal basis to the rename. The president has directed the federal executive branch to refer to Lake Ontario as Lake America, but...that's it. It literally doesn't and can't apply to Google. No law has been passed, and even if there had been it's pretty clear that it's a 1st Amendment issue to compel private entities to refer to things in particular ways -- it would be a slam dunk even on this Supreme Court. Their decision to do it is a voluntary act meant to curry favor with this administration, or at least to avoid pissing it off. This isn't like the Indian laws that make it illegal to publish a map that shows Kashmir as part of Pakistan, it's just a memo to the federal bureaucracy. Yes, this doesn't really matter because there are punishments that are within the power of the president (like cancelling contracts, or cooking up bogus DoJ investigations, or failing to resist antitrust enforcement, etc.) that they want to avoid. This just goes to illustrate that the rule of law in the United States is mostly a fantasy.

[–] vigilantpuma 12 hours ago

> Google is (trying to) sidestep this issue as much as possible by making the name on the map depend on your physical location, language and localization settings, or both. They could easily make the Caspian Sea say Turkmen Sea only in Turkmenistan, and probably would if they wanted to keep doing business in Turkmenistan. This is already how it works for Lake Ontario: if I access from the US, it says "Lake America", but if I VPN to somewhere in Europe, it says "Lake Ontario (Lake America)".

I also assumed that that was happening, and that might even have made sense, but according to my Canadian coworker, Lake Ontario also shows up as Lake America for him.

[–] ElevenLathe 12 hours ago

Like I said, I just tried that and my results say it's happening. GeoIP isn't perfect though, and US/CA telecom infra is hopelessly intermingled, so maybe it's just a technical limitation. I can say when I look from Austin, it's "Lake America", but if I look from Geneva it's "Lake Ontario (Lake America)".

[–] bathtub365 12 hours ago

In the iOS Google Maps app from Canada it shows me Lake Ontario

[–] majorchord 15 hours ago

> whose authority to make that "official" only extends to a single branch of a single level of government.

Yes, and Google has huge contracts with the government, meaning they must adhere to their rules if they want to keep those contracts.

[–] klrefg 8 hours ago

What rules? There are no laws that would require Google or other private entities (or for that matter the overwhelming majority of government organizations) to use any absurd name that the president came up with instead of the actual names. Obviously they feel coerced or are just generally into boot licking but its the opposite of “rules”.

[–] majorchord 8 hours ago

> What rules?

The terms of the legal contract they both would have signed.

Companies generally don't get to do business with the US Government without following their strict rules.

[–] u8 12 hours ago

Lake America, Gulf of America, and Mt. McKinley. The last being arguably the only sensible one based off "common names".

Literally no person not suffering a mental health crisis seriously calls these bodies of water GoA or LA. You could not find a single healthy adult on the Great Lakes who says anything other than Lake Ontario.

Absurd from Google and frankly they need to be punished. I want corporations to be scared of wading into politics again.

[–] rickdeckard 16 hours ago

I guess the "Maps" Team follows a different policy than the "Earth" team...

Although there is also no definition of "common usage". A new name might already qualify if the local government adjacent to this landmark announces to only use this new name from now on.

Reading the article, I assume this would cause the new name to be immediately shown in brackets next to the old name, or am I missing something?

[–] mapontosevenths 16 hours ago

> Although there is also no definition of "common usage".. am I missing something

Common usage is defined in the article as the widespread name used by the local people to refer to it.

[–] lopis 15 hours ago

The moment the president of the US renamed those bodies of water, it became commonly used in all sort of publications since then. It fits their description, no matter how silly.

[–] croon 14 hours ago

[Citation needed]

Yes, a lot of publications reported on the presidents action. I do not have the same experience as you that there's widespread use of the alternative name outside of this context.

[–] klrefg 8 hours ago

It’s commonly used to illustrate how absurd are some of the things the US government is doing. It’s not commonly used to refer to the actual bodies of water.

[–] rickdeckard 14 hours ago

Don't know why you are downvoted, that's how the whole article still can be interpreted.

The only change I can read from it, is that they don't need to apply a renaming from Day#1

[–] mahboi 13 hours ago

Google Maps has had a different policy from this for a long time

[–] hn_throwaway_99 15 hours ago

Wow, thanks for pointing this out. I'll do a mea culpa then. I was uncomfortable making Google the final arbiter of place names, as I didn't find a good reason why we should trust Google more than the democratically elected government of our country.

But I really like this policy. Even though it still relies on Google's definition of "common usage", it makes naming much less arbitrary and more sensical.

I was wrong in my previous analysis. Google had a clear, sensible, defined, published policy, and they broke it to appease a wannabe autocrat.

[–] poulpy123 16 hours ago

It's an american company, whatever they say come with an asterisk saying whatever they say it depends on what the powers in the USA decide (and it's the same for other countries with their own companies).

Anyway I don't think google should be the one choosing the names they call water bodies. They just need to use the official names for the IPs countries, and show lake america, gulf of america, ocean america, asian america, european america and african america if Trump makes it official, but only for the US IPs.

[–] mapontosevenths 15 hours ago

The great state of Indiana once declared that pi was equal to exactly 3.2. [0]

Should they also break all of their code by adhering to that falsehood because it was politically expedient?

Nah. Truth is a real thing, and I want to live in a world were facts are not dictated to us by failed gameshow hosts who happened to turn political in their retirement years.

[0] https://cs.uwaterloo.ca/~alopez-o/math-faq/mathtext/node18.h...

[–] lern_too_spel 13 hours ago

That pi bill never became law.

[–] encrypted_bird 3 hours ago

I would say their point still stands.

Whether the bill was passed is ultimately irrelevant.

[–] brookst 16 hours ago

Do you think Google should serve customers or politicians?

As a user I want the map names I know, not whatever BS some egomaniac politician announced yesterday.

[–] williamdclt 16 hours ago

I don't know... I tend to agree with you (especially in this case), but I can also see cases where that's actually not what I'd expect. My hometown has a square that everyone knows as the "tribunal square" (which used to be its official name), but that's not been its official name in decades and about 30% of people don't even know the current official name, yet I would expect a map to refer to it by its current official name and not "tribunal square".

Maybe not quite the same as in this case, the entity who names the square actually owns the square, which isn't the case in the gulf of mexico naming situation. But there is some grey area I think.

[–] scottyah 13 hours ago

What do you want to see when streets get renamed to Martin Luther King Jr Blvd? Or renamed away from Caesar Chavez? How long do you wait for the "common name" to take precedence?

[–] klrefg 8 hours ago

Street names are fundamentally different. You wait until the new name actually becomes commonly used and not just a deranged joke.

[–] pixl97 15 hours ago

>Do you think Google should serve customers or politicians?

Why not ask the question this way.

Do you think Google should serve people with money in their hand or a gun to their head?

[–] poulpy123 16 hours ago

That's why I wrote official. If the US as a country and as an institution change the name of a place, it is neither the problem nor the role of google to decide if it is good or not. I would not be happy if my president decided to rename the united kingdom to the îles normandes (normandy isles), but I do think that once official google should change the name

[–] klrefg 8 hours ago

Well first the president has to have the actual legal power to “rename” a geographic area or a body of water. Which is not exactly the case. Same way he can’t redefine the meaning of words and such.

[–] rickdeckard 16 hours ago

> "show lake america, gulf of america, ocean america, asian america, european america and african america if Trump makes it official, but only for the US IP"

I would maybe even welcome that approach at this stage, just to demonstrate the absurdity of those decisions.

They could actively encourage also other countries to rename all foreign landmarks as they please, to fast-track a separate "international naming" convention so people can again communicate across borders...

[–] shermantanktop 16 hours ago

Exactly, that's why en-us is different than en-gb, en-ca, or even en-jp.

[–] theodorejb 13 hours ago

As well as Lake Ontario.

[–] ModernMech 14 hours ago

That was "Don't be evil" Google. This is "Do the right thing" Google, completely different. Here, "right" means "what's best for the company" and if that means bending the knee to a wannabe dictator, that's the right thing.