Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum accused Google on Monday of violating the country’s sovereignty, leaving open the possibility of a lawsuit over the tech company labeling the Gulf of Mexico as the Gulf of America in its maps feature.
Sheinbaum argued President Trump’s executive order renaming the gulf applied only to the area of the continental shelf under U.S. control, according to a translation by CNN.
“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 Monday, according to the CNN translation.
“We do not agree with this, and the foreign minister has sent a new letter addressing the issue.”
Trump’s order “only changed the name within his own continental shelf, which extends 22 nautical miles from the U.S. coast — not the entire Gulf,” Sheinbaum said.
A White House official referred The Hill to the text of Trump’s executive order, titled “Restoring Names That Honor American Greatness,” when asked for comment.
According to the order, the “Gulf of America” label applies to “the U.S. Continental Shelf area bounded on the northeast, north, and northwest by the States of Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Florida and extending to the seaward boundary with Mexico and Cuba in the area formerly named as the Gulf of Mexico.”
Google did not immediately respond to a comment request.
It comes less than a week after Sheinbaum floated filing a civil suit against Google over the matter.
Google Maps announced last week it updated the name of the body of water to the Gulf of America for its U.S. users after the U.S. Geographic Names Information System made the change official.
Under the change, users in Mexico will continue to see the name as the Gulf of Mexico, while those elsewhere in the world will see “Gulf of Mexico (Gulf of America).”
Apple Maps and Bing Maps have also updated their systems to align with the name change.
Sheinbaum read aloud Google’s response to a letter sent by Mexico to reporters on Monday.
“As we first announced two weeks ago, and consistent with our product policies, we’ve begun rolling out changes in Google Maps. We would like to confirm that people using Maps in Mexico will continue to see ‘Gulf of Mexico,’” the letter from Google stated, according to CNN.
“People in the U.S. will see ‘Gulf of America’. Everyone else will see both names,” the letter added.
Mexican authorities on Monday wrote that “under no circumstance will Mexico accept the renaming of a geographic zone within its own territory and under its jurisdiction,” according to The Associated Press.
Sheinbaum said Mexico will send another letter arguing the map violates Mexico’s sovereignty because the U.S. has control over about 46 percent of the Gulf, while Mexico controls about 49 percent and Cuba around 5 percent.
These numbers match those determined by Sovereign Limits, a database of international boundaries.
Sheinbaum on Monday said she would await a new response from Google before formally filing a suit.
The Associated Press contributed. Updated at 12:31 p.m.
