TL;DR
- Over the past couple years, the US has been rejecting the established names of various bodies of water, renaming them after itself.
- Popular mapping apps like Google Maps have so far largely adopted those new names.
- Now Google CEO Sundar Pichai has reportedly drawn the line at efforts to rename the Atlantic Ocean.
Things are weird right now in America. The current administration has expressed little interest in abiding by traditional norms, and that’s arguably no clearer than in its unprecedented efforts to rename international bodies of water with jingoistic “American” titles. While Google Maps has so far demonstrated nothing but willingness to deface its maps with the new names, it turns out that there may be one line it’s just not interested in crossing.
Yesterday evening, reports The Washington Post, the president told a crowd in South Carolina that he asked Google CEO Sundar Pichai whether he’d be up to “handle” renaming the Atlantic Ocean.