Mexico has filed a lawsuit against Google after it changed the label for the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America on its maps platform to match U.S. President Donald Trump’s executive order to amend the name of the body of water, Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum announced Friday.
Sheinbaum said at a press briefing that the lawsuit had been filed against the tech giant, without providing additional details.
The lawsuit comes after Sheinbaum threatened in February to sue Google for the name change.
MEXICAN PRESIDENT SIGNALS POSSIBLE LAWSUIT AGAINST GOOGLE OVER GULF OF AMERICA NAME CHANGE
Mexico has filed a lawsuit against Google after it changed the label for the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America on its maps platform. (AP/Fernando Llano)
“We are going to wait. We are already seeing, observing what this would mean from the perspective of legal advice, but we hope that they will make a revision,” Sheinbaum said at the time.
Mexico’s Foreign Relations Ministry has also previously sent letters to Google urging it not to relabel the oceanic basin as the Gulf of America.
Trump signed an order on his first day back in the White House in January to rename the northern part of the gulf to the Gulf of America. The body of water has shared borders between the United States and Mexico, and Trump’s order only carries authority within the U.S.
Trump signed an order on his first day back in the White House in January to rename the northern part of the gulf to the Gulf of America. (Daniel Torok/Chief White House Photographer)
Mexico has argued that the Gulf of America label should only apply to the part over the U.S. continental shelf. The U.S. has control over about 46% of the gulf, Mexico controls about 49% and Cuba controls about 5%, according to Sovereign Limits, a database of international boundaries.
“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 said in February.
The gulf appears in Google Maps as the Gulf of America within the U.S., as the Gulf of Mexico within Mexico and Gulf of Mexico (Gulf of America) everywhere else. It had been called the Gulf of Mexico for more than 400 years.
Google Maps began using Gulf of America for users in the U.S. shortly after Trump’s order. (AP/Google Maps)
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Google Maps began using Gulf of America for users in the U.S. shortly after Trump’s order, citing its “longstanding practice” of following the U.S. government’s lead on these matters. In cases where official names vary between countries, Google’s policy says users will see their official local names.
In February, the Mexican president shared a response from Google’s vice president of government affairs and public policy, Cris Turner, who said the company would not change its policy after Trump’s order.
Sheinbaum’s announcement of the lawsuit comes after House Republicans passed the Gulf of America Act in a 211-206 vote, marking the first step in codifying Trump’s order. The legislation now heads to the Senate.
Fox News Digital has reached out to Google for comment.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.