Lake Ontario and the growing frustration with big tech companies

In a new episode of the exasperating troll politics we have had to endure, the President of the United States, Donald Trump, decided last week to respond to the breakdown of trade negotiations with Canada by signing a decree ordering authorities to rename Lake Ontario as “America Lake.” The Premier of Ontario, Doug Ford, a right-wing populist like Trump (in fact, they were much closer some time ago than they are now) responded in kind, inaugurating a giant sign on the shores of the lake with its original name.

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The complicated U.S. legal system means that every presidential decree (or, to use the official name, executive order) is met with some confusion — for starters, the Seneca tribe has argued that the name “Lake Ontario” is recognized by the United States in a treaty signed in 1794, so the president does not have the power to reverse it — but Google did not hesitate: within hours, in the U.S. version of its map application, Google Maps, the name already appeared as “America Lake.”

The tech giant has reminded that this is its usual policy: in every country where the app operates, it shows the legal borders and usual names in that country. In fact, Google Maps is perhaps too effective in its effort to translate all the names of all the cities: for example, s’Hertogenbosch (Netherlands) appears as Bolduque, which is useful if you are reading a novel set in the Flanders tercios but not so much in almost any other life situation.

In reality, Google has acted in parallel with the Board of Geographic Names, the commission dependent on the federal government that advises the various U.S. public authorities on the use of a specific form. However, it is natural that the prominence of the Mountain View company has been seen as yet another demonstration of the willingness of the big tech companies to comply with any whim of Trumpism.

The reaction was swift. The “degooglization” movements, a community with 475,000 users on Reddit, took the opportunity to recommend alternatives, as did the competition. MapQuest, which dominated the U.S. online maps market until Google entered and — as usual — wiped out the competition, announced that it would not change the lake’s name in its app and launched a page asking users to name it as they wish.

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If there is one thing this episode teaches, it is that there is a visceral weariness in certain sectors of society; against the dominance of big tech, their closeness to far-right positions, and their unethical behaviors. The agreement Meta reached last week for what could be more than 16 billion dollars (an astonishing figure for ordinary people, but tiny on the scale of profits at which Mark Zuckerberg’s company operates) only strengthens those who want distance from the tech giants.

One would expect public authorities to be aware of this rising tide. But in Europe, except for rare exceptions, we have been excessively timid, perhaps because, for many countries, the problem is not that there are big tech companies, but that they are not European.

More and more people reject having their entire lives in the hands of companies subject to Donald Trump’s will. The minimum that can be demanded from the EU governments and the European Commission is a sign that, at least, they are aware of their existence.

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