Google has willingly gone along with Donald Trump’s recurring habit of renaming things, but apparently even the tech giant has its limits when it comes to humiliating itself to show fealty to this administration. During a frankly brutal rally in South Carolina on Wednesday, Trump claimed he had contacted Google CEO Sundar Pichai about renaming the Atlantic Ocean the “American Ocean” on Google Maps, only to be (finally) rebuffed.
During the rally, which took place at Clemson University, Trump disclosed to the audience that he “seriously looked at” changing the name of the Atlantic Ocean, according to Variety’s transcription, and reached out to Google’s CEO to discuss the possibility. “I said, ‘Sundar, I’m thinking of the Atlantic Ocean. Can you handle it?’” Trump told the crowd before claiming that Pichai responded, “No, no, no — this time I’m not doing it… Oceans are different, sir. They cover really a lot of countries. Please don’t ask us to do that.”
That was apparently enough to dissuade Trump, who said he would “probably pass” on the name change.
Trump has beaten the dead horse on changing names, so while it’s at best obnoxious for him to try to run the same play again, there is something revealing in how he described the order of operations.
Per Trump’s account—which everyone should take with a grain of salt given he is the world’s most unreliable narrator—he reached out to Google first before making the name change to make sure the company would go along with it and, when Pichai said they wouldn’t, he backed down.
Previously, Trump has signed executive orders to change the names of different bodies of water—first changing the Gulf of Mexico to the “Gulf of America” and then changing Lake Ontario to “Lake America.” Those orders made the U.S. Geographic Names Information System (GNIS), the official government source for such information, update the names within its system, which Google then pointed to as the reason they went along with the name change.
“We update Google Maps to reflect name changes in official government sources, which is GNIS for the U.S.,” the company previously stated. That approach has basically allowed Google to throw its hands up and say, “Look, we just follow the official sources” in an attempt to wash its hands of the political implications of complying with the name change. But now, per Trump’s accounting of the events, it seems that he may have first made sure that Google would go along with the change before acting on it.
We do know that the Trump administration has at least been in contact with these companies about the America-fication efforts in the past. When Trump signed the executive order for the Lake America change, Interior Secretary Doug Burgum told the press that Trump has spoken to Apple about the situation and, “we may be seeing that change coming up soon to Lake America.” Apple did, in fact, eventually go along with it and updated the name on Apple Maps.
So, is it possible that if either of these companies showed even an ounce of conviction, that Trump might have simply not moved forward with the name changes and would have been reduced to just crossing names out on maps in the White House and scrawling his preferred names over them?
Gizmodo reached out to Google for additional information about the company’s communications with Trump regarding renaming the Atlantic Ocean, but we did not receive a response at the time of publication.
Also, Trump’s game-of-telephone explanation for why Google won’t go along with renaming an ocean doesn’t entirely hold up. Google already displays different names for the Gulf of Mexico and Lake Ontario depending on where users are located. Americans see “Gulf of America” and “Lake America,” while users in Mexico and Canada, respectively, see the original names. Everyone else sees both. In other words, Google has already demonstrated that it can display Trump’s preferred names for Americans without replacing the original names everywhere else.
If Pichai got Trump to back off another name change by lying, it doesn’t exactly reflect any better on the CEO than it would to just go along with it. Both are acts of cowardice, even if the outcomes are different. Also, Trump seems very easy to lie to in general, so maybe always start there. If Pichai could have convinced Trump that Google wouldn’t go along with the “Gulf of America” by saying it’s too complicated because it touches multiple countries, we wouldn’t have to be subjected to this guy posting about changing New Mexico to “New America.”
