Google Maps now shows the ‘Gulf of America’ – The Verge
It made the change after the Trump administration formally changed the name today of the body of water spanning between the eastern coast of Mexico and the Florida panhandle. … Users in Mexico will continue to see “Gulf of Mexico,” while the rest of the world will see the original name with “Gulf of America” in parentheses.
Is Google Maps fatally misleading drivers in India? It’s complicated – Rest of World
When Google Maps launched in India in 2008, it initially struggled due to the lack of street names, which were the foundation of its technology globally. In an X post from October 2023, Elizabeth Laraki, who led the global design team for Google Maps from 2007 to 2009, wrote that this rendered the app’s directions “pretty much useless.” The company subsequently used parks, monuments, shopping centers, landmark buildings, and gas stations to confirm directions instead.
Over the years, Google has launched several new features to improve Maps in India, including voice navigation and transliterated directions in about nine and 10 languages, respectively, to increase accessibility. Most recently, in 2024, the company introduced a simplified interface for reporting road incidents, two new weather-related alerts for streets obscured by flooding or fog, an artificial-intelligence model that estimates road widths, and a feature that alerts users to approaching overpasses in 40 cities.
Google has mapped 300 million buildings, 35 million businesses and places, and streets stretching across 7 million kilometres (over 4 million miles) in India, Ramani told Rest of World.
20 maps that changed the world – Mental Floss
A lot has changed in the world of cartography since people first started trying to map the world, with advancements in knowledge and technology over the centuries leading to increased accuracy. And yet each map offers a subjective view of the world, one that is shaped by the specific time and culture in which it was produced. Here are 20 such pieces throughout history that have changed humanity’s understanding of the world—from an ancient Roman road map to a poverty map of Victorian London.
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