Lake Sovereignty

If you read the news, you're aware that Trump officially renamed Lake Ontario to Lake America this week because he’s a giant baby throwing a tantrum over trade with Canada. But that’s not the interesting part here.

Google immediately updated its maps to match the decision: US users see “Lake America”, Canadian ones see “Lake Ontario”, and everyone else sees both. Tim Cook also got the phone call and is preparing his own capitulation.

That was the intended split, but embedded maps on Canadian government and utility websites started showing “Lake America” too. The outage map for a water company, a federal housing map, and more; they all started showing a name their own government didn’t approve of.

A map widget talked to Mountain View, and Mountain View does what Washington tells it to these days.

If a foreign entity can control what your own government's website shows, it’s not really your infrastructure.

A lake name is obvious and gets noticed. Not everything a platform changes on Washington’s orders will be.

Colin

PS: If you’re looking for a European map service to add to your app or website, I’ve been very happy with Geoapify.