Could have dragged their feet on it, slow-walked it, made excuses, etc. They didn't.
For a recent example, Mount Evans in Colorado was changed to Mount Blue Sky
https://www.cnbctv18.com/technology/google-reclassifies-us-a...
There's a big difference between those two situations.
The executive branch has decided to call it something different than its internationally accepted name as a political stunt. Google could just ignore this, but instead they chose to obey in advance.
If the US government says it’s the name of something, then it’s any map company’s job to display the valid name of the thing to the users in that country. They still show “Gulf of Mexico” to users in other countries.
But, Google is not legally obliged to in this case. Google is obeying in advance.
His comments are incorrect.
>Google has chosen, at the behest of no law, to place the US on its "sensitive countries" list, which is the mechanism it uses to show users from certain countries incorrect names which it is legally obliged to.
That is not what happened, you got fooled by fake news. From Google directly: "This report is misleading. “Sensitive” is simply used in our internal systems for countries that see different official names in Maps (like a different name for a body of water) — that’s all there is to it. This is common & includes dozens of countries. Adding the U.S. & Mexico to that list means nothing more than that."[0]
"Gulf of America" is not an incorrect name, that is the current offical name of that body of water according to the GNIS, which is the authoritative source in the US.
>But, Google is not legally obliged to in this case. Google is obeying in advance.
Google is just following the protocol they've always followed, one that predates Trump. They're not doing anything in advance. This is by definition not "obeying in advance."
QED.
[0] https://x.com/NewsFromGoogle/status/1884450853136073002?mx=2