On Monday, Google announced that Gulf of Mexico would be renamed to Gulf of America, as demanded by Donald Trump.

That evening, in response to a post from @luckytran about this change, I wrote:

This will surely change as Apple bows to pressure, but for now, I'm sharing my appreciation.

I included screenshots of Apple Maps still showing Gulf of Mexico and a “No matching places found” error when searching for Gulf of America.

My appreciation was short-lived. Today, Apple bowed to the pressure:

I actually thought it would take Apple longer to acquiesce, that they’d employ some simple sabotage to slow things down, insist they needed to get “community input” or “global acceptance”, or merely needed to “follow procedures,” a process Apple knows quite well.

But no. They acted quickly, almost eagerly. Here you go, sir. Can I get you anything else, sir? Thank you, sir.

I understand that map names are driven by governmental decree, and, having been thus decreed, Google, Apple, and other map providers might feel they had no choice but to comply—though, as of this writing, only Google and Apple have done so.

Yet I can’t tell what consequences there’d be if they hadn’t complied. It appears there are no direct legal penalties for companies (or individuals) for simply ignoring the change. Apple and Google could have defied Trump and all he could do is impotently yell at them. Perhaps they are fearful of punitive action from Trump’s regime—punishing tariffs? mean tweets?—but they didn’t even test his resolve.

Tim Cook could have insisted that there are four lights^[1] and defied Trump to call him a liar.

Instead, the rest of the world laughs as we insist it’s the Gulf of America.

As it always has been, of course.