As an investor in Alphabet, I wrote a strongly worded message to investor relations. They're being stupid. When the names are restored, are they going to change their maps again? Is this going to be every four years that they change names to make whomever is in power happy? It's ludicrous.

There's actually an almost legitimate reason. I asked Gemini:

Q: Why did google maps change the name of Lake Ontario to Lake America?

A: Google Maps changed the display name of Lake Ontario to Lake America for users within the United States due to an official change in federal geographic records, following an executive order signed by U.S. President Donald Trump.

Here is how and why the mapping update occurred:

The Cause: U.S. Federal Government Designation:

Executive Order: Following a escalation in trade tensions and tariffs between the U.S. and Canada, President Trump signed an executive order directing federal agencies to officially refer to Lake Ontario as "Lake America" in U.S. records.

GNIS Update: The U.S. Department of the Interior subsequently updated the official **Geographic Names Information System (GNIS)**—the authoritative database for federal geographic names in the United States—to reflect "Lake America".

Google’s Policy on International Border Names:

Google's standard policy is to rely on local official government databases (such as GNIS) to determine place names displayed to users in that specific country. Because GNIS updated its entry, Google Maps updated the display name according to its regional rules:

- For U.S. Users: The lake is labeled as Lake America.
- For Canadian Users: The lake remains labeled as Lake Ontario.
- For International Users: The app shows Lake Ontario (Lake America) to reflect both national naming conventions.

(Google applied this exact same regional policy when the U.S. government renamed the Gulf of Mexico to the "Gulf of America" in U.S. federal records).

Reaction & Status Outside the U.S.:

Because executive orders cannot dictate naming conventions for other sovereign nations or private entities outside U.S. federal jurisdiction:

Canada: Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney and provincial leaders rejected the renaming, pointing to the name's 400-plus-year history originating from the Indigenous Wendat word Ontari'io.

Other Platforms: Other mapping services are handling it differently; for example, MapQuest explicitly declined to update the name on its platform.