<html aria-label="message body"><head><meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=us-ascii"></head><body style="overflow-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space;"><br id="lineBreakAtBeginningOfMessage"><div><blockquote type="cite"><span style="font-family: "Courier New", Courier, monospace; font-size: 10pt;">The recent incident with Lake Ontario has proven how weak our digital maps are from censorship/manipulation/hacking.</span><br></blockquote>Sorry, but no. The US maintains a database of the official names of various geographic features. It is within the President's authority to change the names. Whether the change is made for good reasons or bad, the fact is that this isn't censorship, manipulation, or hacking. Stupidity, yes - but the theoretical intelligence or rightness of an action has nothing to do with its legitimacy.<br><blockquote type="cite"><div style="font-family: "Courier New", Courier, monospace; font-size: 10pt;"><p style="line-height: 1;"><span style="font-size: 10pt;">Two $4+ trillion market cap companies folded in less than few days last week to pressure from the US White House to make certain modifications to their (our ?) maps.</span></p></div></blockquote>Both Google and Apple have long-established policies about how to name things. They pick up the names from the official databases in each country in which they operate. Where there's a dispute about naming, they have standard ways to indicate the appropriate naming for users nominally based in each country. Ultimately, this is no different from calling a central European country Germany when the selected language is English and Deutschland when the language is set to German. That one is non-controversial, but there are cases (Macedonia was one - Greece objected to Macedonia calling itself that because they view Macedonia as a region of Greece; I gather that got settled when the country renamed itself to North Macedonia) where the naming of whole countries is controversial.</div><div><br></div><div>So Apple and Google didn't "fold" - they chose to leave their existing policies in place rather than get into a pissing contest with DJT. Would I have felt some admiration for them had they chosen to fight this fight, as MapQuest did? Sure, but the whole trend of corporations making random political statements cuts both ways: If you're happy with them making statements you agree with, you have to at least accept when they make statements you find offensive. All these political statements have led to ever more polarization, with calls for boycotts from both sides. This does none of us any good.</div><div><br></div><div>And, BTW, the battles between Disney and the state of Florida - and specifically with its governor - looked great at first - when Disney was winning - but ended up costing Disney. Was it worth it? Many companies are looking at the costs and saying no, it's not a war we want to fight.<br><blockquote type="cite"><div style="font-family: "Courier New", Courier, monospace; font-size: 10pt;"><p style="line-height: 1;">So far, MaqQuest has not folded, but it remains to be seen how long Google and Apple will deign to allow MapQuest to remain available in their app stores.</p></div></blockquote>My prediction: Indefinitely. Not everything is about politics.<br><blockquote type="cite"><div style="font-family: "Courier New", Courier, monospace; font-size: 10pt;"><p style="line-height: 1;"><span style="font-size: 10pt;">What can we do, when governments -- the traditional makers of "official" maps -- can no longer be trusted to provide accurate information ?</span></p></div></blockquote>There's exactly one thing we can do: Throw the bastards out. This is one of government's jobs, and has been for a very long time. If there is going to be some kind of digital signing or other guarantee of authenticity, then it will of course be the government who will sign to say "yes, this is the official map."</div><div><br></div><div>If you want an *un*official map - no one stops you from making one. There are tons of local place names that have no official existence but are widely used by those living in an area. That doesn't seem to bother anyone. (The Post Office will generally deliver mail using the unofficial names - the local postal workers know them as well as anyone else - but if you use their database to "normalize" an address, you'll get the official name.)</div><div><div> -- Jerry</div><div><br></div></div></body></html>