Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum has said that her government is suing Google over the “Gulf of America” rebrand.
Sheinbaum announced on Friday that their government is suing tech giant Google over relabeling the “Gulf of Mexico” to the “Gulf of America.”
The change, which was ordered at the beginning of US President Donald Trump’s latest term, only applies to users in the US. The name of the oceanic basin remains the “Gulf of Mexico” for Google Maps users in Mexico.
However, Google Maps users elsewhere in the world will see “Gulf of Mexico,” and in parentheses, they will see “(Gulf of America)” next to it.
Sheinbaum has previously threatened the tech giant with court if the name wasn’t сhanged back.
According to a machine-translated transcript of the Mexican president’s press briefing, she said that “the only thing we want is compliance with the decree issued by the United States government,” The Verge writes.
Sheinbaum continued that the US government “wouldn’t have the authority to name the entire Gulf, because that is an international attribution.”
In essence, Sheinbaum states that areas corresponding to Mexico or Cuba can’t be renamed by an outside authority.
“We couldn’t say anything about changing the name of a state, a mountain, or a lake. So, the part of their territory that corresponds to them can be called whatever they decide,” President Sheinbaum declared.
Mexico had previously criticized Google for placating President Trump. The country challenged the company to rename the US as América Mexicana, or Mexican America, as some of its territories were referred to in the 17th century.
Google previously said it has a "longstanding practice of applying name changes when they have been updated in official government sources.”
The tech behemoth referred to a body of water between Japan and Korea. While Japan prefers to call it the Sea of Japan, Korea has long urged to rename it as the East Sea or East Sea/Sea of Japan.
The Gulf of Mexico has been referred to as “The Gulf of Mexico” for hundreds of years, long before both Mexico and the US were founded.
Cybernews reported that other tech giants followed suit, as Apple renamed the Gulf to “Gulf of America” on its Maps, as did Microsoft on its Bing Maps.
The Associated Press (AP) said it would continue to refer to the Gulf of Mexico by its original name.
Following this declaration, one of AP’s reporters was refused entry into the White House for an event at the Oval Office.
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