On Monday, February 17, Mexico mentioned they may sue Google for changing the name of the Gulf of Mexico to the “Gulf of America” on Google Maps if the company does not respond appropriately.

According to CNN, Google Maps changed the name of the whole gulf, but President Donald Trump’s decree “only changed the name within his own continental shelf, which extends 22 nautical miles from the US coast—not the entire Gulf” (Rios, Stockwell, Suarez, Feb 17). Interestingly, an article on Forbes reported that “U.S. users of Google Maps now see the body of water listed as the ‘Gulf of America’…while Mexican users still see it as the Gulf of Mexico, and users in other countries see both names” (Durkee, Feb 17).

AP News states that in response to the name change, the president of Mexico, Claudia Sheinbaum, has been exchanging letters with Cris Turner, Google’s vice president of government affairs and public policy. CNN quoted one of the more recent letters from Sheinbaum which read, in part,

“‘…any reference to the ‘Gulf of America’ initiative on your Google Maps platform must be strictly limited to the marine area under U.S. jurisdiction…Any extension beyond that zone exceeds the authority of any national government or private entity. Should that be the case, the Government of Mexico will take the appropriate legal actions as deemed necessary…’” (Rios, Stockwell, Suarez, Feb 17).

Similarly, CNN quotes a letter from Google. In this letter, Turner cited Google’s “longstanding practice of applying name changes when they have been updated in official government sources” (Rios, Stockwell, Suarez, Feb 17). The article on USA Today said that the name has been updated in government sources as “President Donald Trump signed an executive order on his first day in office renaming the ‘Gulf of Mexico’ to the ‘Gulf of America’ in an ongoing bid to put America first” (Crowley and Gomez, Feb 18). Additionally, USA Today reported “While flying over the body of water on his way to the Super Bowl, [Trump] also proclaimed Feb. 9 as ‘Gulf of America Day’” (Crowley and Gomez, Feb 18).