Following U.S. President Donald Trump’s executive order to rename the body of water, Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum revealed Friday that Mexico has sued Google for changing the name of the Gulf of Mexico on its mapping platform to the Gulf of America.
Without going into detail, Sheinbaum informed the press briefing that the tech behemoth was the target of the case.
Following Sheinbaum’s February threat to sue Google over the name change, the complaint has now been filed.
“Here, we will patiently wait. From a legal counsel standpoint, we are already witnessing the consequences of this, but we are hoping that they will change it,” Sheinbaum stated at the time.
In the past, the Mexican Ministry of Foreign Relations has written to Google to ask that the ocean basin not be renamed the Gulf of America.
Upon returning to the White House in January, Trump issued an executive order renaming the northern portion of the Gulf to the Gulf of America. The United States and Mexico share boundaries with this body of water, yet Trump’s order only has jurisdiction within the United States.
According to Mexico, the term “Gulf of America” should only be used for the area that extends beyond the United States’ continental shelf. According to Sovereign Limits, a database of international borders, the United States owns around 46% of the Gulf, Mexico about 49%, and Cuba about 5%.
“What Google is doing here is changing the name of the continental shelf of Mexico and Cuba, which has nothing to do with Trump’s decree, which applied only to the U.S. continental shelf,” Sheinbaum pointed out in February.
In certain regions, such as the United States, Google Maps displays the gulf as the Gulf of Mexico; in others, it displays it as the Gulf of America. For about 400 years, it was known as the Gulf of Mexico.
As a “longstanding practice” of following the U.S. government’s lead on these topics, Google Maps started using Gulf of America for U.S. users immediately after Trump’s decision. Users will see their official local names in circumstances when there is a difference across nations, according to Google’s policy.
In February, the president of Mexico tweeted a statement from Cris Turner, Google’s VP of government affairs and public policy, who stated that the company’s policy will remain unchanged in response to Trump’s order.
Following the passage of the Gulf of America Act by House Republicans in a 211-206 vote, the first step toward codifying Trump’s directive, Sheinbaum announced the lawsuit. Next, the bill will be considered by the Senate.