Summary
- Reviews are now turned off on Google Maps for the Gulf of America.
- Google renamed the Gulf of Mexico on the service for those in the US earlier this week.
- The company enacted similar review limitations in the past for other major news events.
Google Maps enacted its Gulf of America name change earlier this week before Apple and Bing followed suit. That has led to negative backlash on Google’s service, and the company has stopped it by turning off reviews for the Gulf of America. President Donald Trump renamed the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America in the first week of his presidency, and it has seen these companies rename the location for users based in the US.
Until Thursday, February 13, you were able to add reviews for the location on the service. Now, if you head to the location, you’ll see a message saying “Posting is currently turned off”. Google has reportedly deleted some existing reviews that were critical of the name change.
Related
Google Maps renames Gulf of Mexico in the US, rest of the world gets tweaked name too
The name change is now official on Google Maps
The change was spotted by Forbes, and Google soon responded with a full statement. That statement reads, “We regularly put protections on places during times when we anticipate an uptick of contributions that are off-topic or unrelated to someone’s direct experience with the place”. That spokesperson also highlighted a previous blog post from 2023 that says it will always remove “unhelpful content” from Google Maps.
The company enacted a similar process in December 2024 after the arrest of Luigi Mangione, the suspect in the killing of Brian Thompson, the CEO of UnitedHealthcare. Mangione was arrested in a branch of McDonalds in Pennsylvania, and in the days after his arrest, the branch saw a flood of bad reviews on the service from those protesting. Google soon stopped reviews of the location and deleted what it called “unhelpful content”.
What is a review of a body of water, anyway?
One of those Google Maps quirks
This is a slightly different scenario though with an entire body of water being closed to reviews. Arguably, it was odd you could even review a location as big as the Gulf of Mexico. For example, right now there are five reviews for the Atlantic Ocean giving it an average rating of 4.8 out of 5. Most of the reviews are wordless or talk about the ocean’s cleanliness, which is a difficult thing for someone to judge about such a large location. One review reads, “One of the best oceans in the world. connects the Americas to Europe”. Thanks for the helpful content, Google Maps review submitter.
