Google’s ‘Gulf of America’ Move Is Just the Start—Here’s What Else They Changed
Aye, Google. The tech giant is quickly bowing to the Trump administration’s culture war against anything not white, straight, and male. We all know that President Donald Trump couldn’t wait to help working-class Americans by changing the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America. Google is proving to be more than eager and excited to make the changes to its platform to make the current federal government happy. Here’s what has been going on.
Google, Apple, and Bing have officially changed the Gulf of Mexico’s name
Earlier this year, in a flurry of executive orders signed by President Trump, one order aimed to restore American greatness through changing names. Executive Order 14172 is literally called “Restoring Names That Honor American Greatness.” President Trump, through the order, changed the name of the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America. Major tech companies then quickly bowed to the executive order, which is honestly more ceremonial than enforceable.
A search for the Gulf of Mexico in Google returns the Gulf of America as the main result. Looking at the Apple Maps, Google Maps, Google Earth, and Bing Maps all show that the body of water’s name has changed. Some social media users are offering Americans a how-to when reporting the name as incorrect to tech companies.
The decision to change the name on maps is in stark contrast to The Associated Press’s decision to use the term Gulf of Mexico moving forward. President Trump has since revoked The Associated Press’s access to the Oval Office in retaliation for not defying journalistic integrity.
Google is going even further than renaming the Gulf of Mexico to seemingly appease the new federal government’s culture war
Google has changed the holidays and observances it shares on Its Calendar. All federal and major holidays remain, but months observing communities have been removed. Google Calendar will no longer show Hispanic Heritage Month, PRIDE Month, Indigenous Peoples’ Month, Holocaust Remembrance Day, and many more.
“Maintaining hundreds of moments manually and consistently globally wasn’t scalable or sustainable,” Google said in a statement to The Associated Press. “So in mid-2024, we returned to showing only public holidays and national observances from timeanddate.com globally, while allowing users to manually add other important moments.”
It is interesting to say that they couldn’t maintain the list of observances. You will still find Columbus Day on your Google Calendar on October 13th. Yet, Indigenous Peoples’ Day, which was in response to Columbus Day and adopted by many states, was too hard to keep on the calendar.
Not to brag, but many people know how to have their regular work meetings repeat on certain days of the month in perpetuity. However, we are meant to believe that Google doesn’t have the capability to auto-populate observances like Black History Month annually.
Numerous companies in the United States have rolled back their diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) commitments. Google joined the wave to move away from specific DEI policies and only just addressed the decisions with the staff.
