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this is both: 1) an extremely stupid situation caused by a deeply unserious individual and 2) 100% the correct product call by google they do this all the time for disputed names, and even change borders depending on who's viewing, e.g. the disputed border between India and Pakistan.

folks blaming google for "capitulating" on this don't understand that there are 195 countries on the planet & G shows different labels for geographical features to *everyone* depending on their language & country. why would they make a special exception for the US just because we voted in a dumbass

(Specifically, the root source of truth for "what the US government calls things" is the USGS's Geographic Names Information System. Google will call geographic feature #558730 whatever GNIS calls it -- currently "Gulf of Mexico". Like it or not, USGS is part of the executive branch.)

taking small solace that at least it's not Musk who's president, or it'd end up named something like "the Gulf of Based Doge"

There's an OSM discussion thread on how to handle the Gulf of Mexico & they've done something similar in the past for disputed borders of seas near China but don't currently seem to have a mechanism for "nobody's disputing the *geometry*, just the name" community.openstreetmap.org/t/gulf-of-am...

the executive order about the Gulf is worded poorly (of course) but there appears to be a reading in which Trump is only claiming the "Gulf of America" as the part which is on the US continental shelf, which would mean that there is a Gulf of America in the north and a Gulf of Mexico south of it

but who decides who has the authority to choose the official_name?

At the end of the day, the collective of OSM editors :) Same as Wikipedia, where there are long and active threads about changing the official page title fors both Denali and Gulf of Mexico: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:De... en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Gu...