
As Google Maps Renames Neighborhoods, Residents Fume - draenei
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/02/technology/google-maps-neighborhood-names.html
======
reaperducer
I deal with this with one of the web sites I maintain.

I think, as noted in the article, that it seems Google sometimes uses names
from advertisements as if they are canonical.

In my case, the city in question puts out a very specific, very legally
defined map of each neighborhood, and has for more than a century. But real
estate agents make up names for the neighborhoods, or fudge the boundaries to
improve selling prices (thus commissions) and make their offerings more
attractive.

About a year after a new neighborhood name is invented by a real estate
agency, it starts showing up on Google maps. Then I have to deal with people
complaining that our locations are mislabeled, because if it's on Google, it
must be right.

It happens so often that I have an e-mail macro to respond to these people.
And since the web site is very well respected by the locals, a couple of times
a year I get requests from real estate agents, developers, and others, to
change our maps to match their needs.

I got a particularly ridiculous one just this week saying that it's "our
policy" (the real estate developer's) that maps should be drawn along a
certain set of lines, and that we (the web site) are required to adhere to
their policy.

I laughed.

~~~
ErikAugust
"I think, as noted in the article, that it seems Google sometimes uses names
from advertisements as if they are canonical."

\---

"Currently the predominant business model for commercial search engines is
advertising... We expect that commercial search engines will be inherently
biased towards the advertisers and away from the needs of the consumers..." \-
Sergey Brin and Larry Page, 1998

[http://infolab.stanford.edu/~backrub/google.html](http://infolab.stanford.edu/~backrub/google.html)

~~~
extralego
Nice link. It is incredibly interesting that the Google founders were so
outspoken against advertising.

I’d love a detailed account of the process which derailed these moral ideals.
Anyone?

~~~
danudey
The progression makes sense.

1\. Let's make a better search engine. 2\. Let's put ads on our search engine.
3\. Let's create our own ad network so that we can control what ads look like,
so they're unobtrusive. 4\. People like our ads, let's put them on other
people's pages. 5\. People want more interesting ads, let's expand out. 6\.
Our business relies on ads, we need to collect more user data so we can focus
ads even better than our competitors.

By doing advertising 'better' they could make a better product. Unfortunately,
they went down the exact same path that other advertisers did: getting more
invasive and more aggressive and less user-centric. I hate slippery slope
arguments, but this seems to apply in retrospect.

~~~
extralego
Alright. So it was just a flat out mistake to think morality was considered
even in the slightest.

~~~
bigiain
<sings>

For the love of money

People will steal from their mother

For the love of money

People will rob their own brother

For the love of money

People can't even walk the street

Because they never know who in the world they're gonna beat

For that lean, mean, mean green

\-- For The Love Of Money, O'Jays

~~~
kiriakasis
Most of the steps down this slippery slope were likely to the end of providing
a better service. that is why it is insidious, you don't need to act "the love
of money" to end up serving "the love of money"

------
antoncohen
Why is this Google's fault?

I walk through The East Cut nearly every day, and I admit I was confused by
the rebranding. But it wasn't done by Google. There are people cleaning the
sidewalks in East Cut shirts, banners that say East Cut, real estate companies
that call it East Cut. It would be a little weird if Google ignored the name.

Yes, "The East Cut" is a strange name. But that area as never part of South
Beach (which is also a strange name given that there is no beach). It wasn't
really Rincon Hill, it is the area below Rincon Hill and is at sea level.

The East Cut is part of the larger South of Market area, and some of it could
be considered to be the southern part of the Financial District[1]. But the
neighborhood has evolved into its own thing, and deserves its own name.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_neighborhoods_in_San_F...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_neighborhoods_in_San_Francisco#Financial_District_South)

~~~
huebnerob
Indeed, the article complains about names 'just being made up' but fails to
provide any evidence of that actually happening. Instead, all the other odd
names they call out actually originated somewhere in the community, albeit
perhaps from esoteric sources.

What's more, NYT seems to willfully ignore that place names change and evolve
constantly through natural social processes just like these. That Google is
indexing this makes them no more the arbiter of it than a library is the
arbiter of all knowledge.

~~~
wlesieutre
>Indeed, the article complains about names 'just being made up'

Unlike all those other placenames like "South of Market" which were decreed by
god when he created San Fransisco :P

What they're really getting at is that it was made up by the wrong people.
Like anything else that once happened organically among groups of people, you
can now wrangle up an advertising budget and push it along.

My neighborhood has a "real" neighborhood name and a silly sub-neighborhood
name that gets brought up once a year for a block party. If real estate
developers thought the name was valuable, I bet it would mysteriously become a
lot more popular.

~~~
jonas21
From the article:

> In San Francisco, the East Cut name originated from a neighborhood nonprofit
> group that residents voted to create in 2015 to clean and secure the area.

How are these the "wrong" people to be naming the neighborhood?

------
bcoates
Heroically buried lede 80% of the way down:

 _The East Cut name originated from a neighborhood nonprofit group in San
Francisco that residents voted to create in 2015 to clean and secure the area.
The nonprofit paid $68,000 to a “brand experience design company” to rebrand
the district. [...] and one of the East Cut nonprofit’s board members is a
Google employee._

Inverted pyramid is for those other newspapers I guess

~~~
dilap
Yeah, the top half of the article is all-but-lying to you, strongly implying
that Google just created the name out of mid-air. Which is typical
newspaper/NYT behavior.

------
hyperberry
Google puts far too much stock into the "accuracy" of its Maps data.

Here's my fun story: in order to verify my dad's website with Google's 'My
Business' service (now a defunct product?), they had to mail a physical
postcard with PIN code to ensure the address was legitimate. Picking the
mailing address was hooked into Maps/ Maps data; a "real" address had to be
among their existing database of addresses.

Well, my dad lives in a somewhat-rural area outside St. Louis. His street is
"Alt Road" \-- named after the Alt family, German immigrants who started a
large farm in the area 150+ years ago.

Yet Google Maps had the street listed as "Alternate Road". Clearly some data
entry person presumed it must be an abbreviation and took liberty to 'correct'
the apparent mistake.

So it was literally impossible to have a postcard mailed to his address on Alt
Road. I had to have it sent to Alternate Road instead. I recognize, of course,
the verification steps taken thereafter will have permanently corroborated
what was bad data in first place. Now I'm part of the problem.

I'm guessing Maps will now forever have renamed the street. Should I alert the
county to Dad's 'new' mailing address?

~~~
Bjartr
Have you tried using the "Send Feedback" menu option in Google maps? It can
take some time (on the order of weeks), but I've found they do seem to be
responsive to feedback about incorrect data.

~~~
dom96
I'm not the OP but I have found this menu option to be incredibly useless.
Google Maps has strangely lost the ability to point to my address and has
refused to fix it for many years now. What's most frustrating is that the
"Send Feedback" option offers no way to specify that an address is in the
incorrect place, I can only select roads. I have resorted to trying to explain
the problem in text but they never got back to me.

Every time a HN thread like this pops up I write about my annoyance with this
and nobody has any solution apart from this suggestion. It shouldn't be this
hard. Open Street Map is a breath of fresh air in comparison.

------
ender7
Maps are, infamously, a place where "truth" is not usually an attainable goal.
All cartographers are faced with the decision between creating a map that is
uncontroversial vs. one that is useful. When possible they optimize for both,
but when the two (frequently) are in opposition to one another, it's time to
choose.

> Matthew Hyland, [...] said he considered those all made-up names, some of
> which he deleted from the map

Unfortunately _all_ place names are made-up names. If everyone suddenly agrees
to start calling a place by a new name, who is Google to argue? But what if
people can't agree and some start calling it by a new name and others don't?
And of course you can't just poll every resident for their opinion, so you're
stuck with relying on other signals...like local advertising and publications.

Appeals to authority are also of dubious value. There may be an "official" map
somewhere, but if it doesn't reflect the day-to-day usage of the space, is it
very useful? Prescriptivist maps generally enjoy about as much success as
prescriptivist linguistics -- pretty to look at, but not what you want in your
back pocket.

------
jrockway
I feel like the issue here is that there simply isn't any data that
definitively maps out where neighborhoods are. I have never been certain where
neighborhood boundaries are in any city I've lived in. I remember when I lived
in Chicago I looked around for an official source and found one from the
city... except the districts had no resemblance to what people were calling
the neighborhoods. Meanwhile, real estate types always had very generous
boundaries ("this isn't Cabrini Green, it's Lincoln Park" ok...).

Anyway, authoritative data could exist, but you'd have to collect it by survey
and you'd have to get a lot of people to truthfully reply to the survey. No
financial incentive exists to collect this data, apparently; wrong data sells
condos (see the Cabrini Green quip above) and correct data gets you nothing
except a map that more people agree with.

On some level, perhaps people read too much into neighborhoods. "I'm a good
person because I live in neighborhood X." That is probably not an association
worth making, but I think it exists because the reactions to wrong information
in Google Maps apparently elicit so much vitriol.

~~~
NittLion78
This Google Map overlay is the best Chicago neighborhood map I've seen.

[https://www.google.com/maps/d/u/1/viewer?msa=0&mid=13rPY3gTM...](https://www.google.com/maps/d/u/1/viewer?msa=0&mid=13rPY3gTMOtHUdmp-
VKa4waVj6es&ll=41.83409121914807%2C-87.6853585&z=10)

My only real complaint with its accuracy is I recognize that Wicker Park
extends north to the Bloomingdale Line, but otherwise, it's pretty good. It
includes a lot of pocket neighborhoods like Palmer Square and the Wrigleyville
portion of Lakeview, too.

~~~
jrockway
I haven't lived in Chicago for 6 years, but is that area west of the loop to
about Ashland not called "West Loop" anymore?

------
cbhl
_Google 's San Francisco office_ is in "East Cut". The idea of divorcing
"Google" from "Locals" is utterly ridiculous in our neighbourhood. This is one
of the few places I'd expect Maps to actually be up-to-date with changes on
the ground.

San Francisco says it's a liberal city of immigrants, but unless you're born
here and have lived here all your life somehow you're part of the evil "other"
that is ruining the city and changing the names of neighborhoods.

~~~
RyJones
Google has an office in Kirkland, where I live, and I understand some folks
work on Google Maps. The data in and around Kirkland is not great. I realized
that people that live and work in Kirkland would probably have no reason to
discover how bad the directions are - who would dogfood driving directions to
the local office?

For _years_ , several dozen points of interest in downtown Seattle were
transposed into downtown Kirkland. It totally broke routing - if you tried to
map a bus route from Kirkland to the Seattle Federal Building, it would give
you a route that dumped you in a residential neighborhood in Kirkland.

~~~
darkengine
I live in neighborhood that was annexed by the City of Kirkland in 2011. 7
years later, Google's geo data still can't decide if it's part of Kirkland,
part of Woodinville, or its own city altogether. Twitter identifies the
neighborhood as its own city, which it never was, and definitely is not today.

~~~
RyJones
I used to live in Kingsgate. There is a section of 124th that runs parallel to
124th. It breaks Google maps :)

------
JdeBP
In fairness, Google Maps did not invent these names itself. It merely
collected by rôte and systematized, without any quality control or fact
checking, names invented and published by other people.

This is a general problem with deriving stuff indiscriminately from
information supplied by unidentified people.

Wikipedia has a whole bunch of similar inventions, made up by people writing
them into Wikipedia initially. ([http://jdebp.info./FGA/legacy-encoding-has-
no-definition.htm...](http://jdebp.info./FGA/legacy-encoding-has-no-
definition.html)
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:List_of_citogenesis_...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:List_of_citogenesis_incidents))
And there is a fair amount of stuff that survived in Wikipedia for a long
time, based solely upon a mention by other, highly credulous, WWW sites.

Google Web famously gives greater credence to some common spelling errors.

------
throwaway123124
Google does a lot of weird things with their maps, some of them aren't
accidental. Here's my local anecdote:

I live in Thessaloniki, Macedonia (the region, not the country), Greece. In
our city there's a bus station called "Bus Station Macedonia".

Funded in 1952, long before the name conflict became a thing, it was named
that way because it was servicing the region of Macedonia in Greece (it's an
intercity bus station).

Recently, I noticed that Google maps names it "Bus Station Thessaloniki". I
live in this city for well over 20 years and I have never, not once heard it
called this way. If you ask for the "Bus Station Thessaloniki" locals will ask
you what do you mean. But Google returns "Thessaloniki" to the query
"Macedonia".

And it's a recent thing. I don't want to get into the details of the naming
conflict, but the fact is that our NATO allies want to usher Macedonia (FYROM,
the country) into NATO really fast, despite their nationalist and expansionist
government, because of Russia. That's a reasonable move and I fully support
it.

The problem arises when instead of actually intermediating to find a solution
to the name issue, they just use their tools (like Google Maps) as a
propaganda machine with complete disregard to our interests or even the fabric
of reality (It's simply not named like that. Period.).

Of course there are a lot more machine-learning based artifacts on Google maps
than political ones (for example Fiskhorn-->Fishkorn is probably the result of
assuming misspelled queries as the ground truth) but keep in mind they can use
this power in numerous, much more malicious ways (ie downgrading or upgrading
neighborhoods, reducing visibility of businesses that they don't like etc).

~~~
dannyw
> (for example Fiskhorn-->Fishkorn is probably the result of assuming
> misspelled queries as the ground truth

The article literally explains that the mispelling is due to Google relying on
a 20 year old document lying somewhere around the internet with misspelt
names.

------
ilamont
_In Los Angeles, Jeffrey Schneider, a longtime architect in the Silver Lake
area, said he recently began calling the hill he lived on 'Silver Lake
Heights' in ads for his rental apartment downstairs, partly as a joke. Last
year, Silver Lake Heights also appeared on Google Maps._

Google asleep at the wheel again.

Developers wanting to create some tony new "neighborhood" as well as real
estate agents attempting to shift the borders of desirable and undesirable
neighborhoods are having a field day.

~~~
LeifCarrotson
Doesn't seem unreasonable at all. Guy calls his apartments Silver Lake
Heights, his tenants tell their visitors they live in Silver Lake Heights #4,
visitors punch that in their phones but can't find it, get the street adress,
and a couple enterprising 'local guides' suggest a place name.

~~~
dsnuh
The guy's apartment building isn't called Silver Lake Heights, what he did was
start using the term "Silver Lake Heights" to describe an area previously
known as "Silver Lake".

Realtors often drive the naming of new "neighborhoods", especially if it is
lower class area that they want to gentrify. You know, branding.

~~~
raldi
How do you think other neighborhoods called [Something] Heights came to be?

~~~
dsnuh
I understand what you are saying, places are whatever people agree to call
them, but I don't doubt that real estate agents, developers, etc are eager to
have places called by new names when they are gentrifying the area.

~~~
raldi
Sure, but only insofar as any group of people living in a neighborhood likes
to name it. Or do you still call the city by its original name, Yerba Buena?
:)

Edit: Oh wait, that was a renaming too; just ask the Ohlone.

~~~
acct1771
Did the Ohlone use OpenStreetMaps?

Maybe that's the confusion.

------
keane
In this article, the _New York Times_ , with a bureau in the neighborhood
recently renamed, considers what (or who) might function as the authoritative
determination of place names for neighborhoods.

Meanwhile, in Los Angeles, the _Los Angeles Times_ themselves provide the
authoritative source of neighborhoods in LA [1], through an extensive project
incorporating local feedback and years of their employees' experience covering
stories around LA county.

[1]
[http://maps.latimes.com/neighborhoods/](http://maps.latimes.com/neighborhoods/)

------
bumholio
> named his new publishing start-up Fishkorn this year after seeing the name
> on Google Maps. “It rolls off the tongue,” he said

And there you have it, the exact same process that gave rise to all toponyms.
It's debatable if Google has a fault for unwittingly altering a random walk.
Your older Fiskhorn is no more 'right' than my new Fishkorn, and in many ways
worse. If consensus forms, by whatever means, that's what's right.

~~~
smallnamespace
> If consensus forms, by whatever means, that's what's right.

Seems a bit strange that you combined an absolute prescriptivist stance
('what's right') in support of an absolute descriptivist one.

It's not logically self-consistent: what if a consensus forms that _your view
here_ is wrong?

~~~
tialaramex
The question wasn't about how to determine all truths, only truths about what
things are named.

For example, a bridge was constructed in central London named William Pitt
bridge, named for the Prime Minister. But people didn't _call_ it "William
Pitt Bridge", people called it "Blackfriars Bridge", because they'd always
named that part of London "Blackfriars" and that's where the bridge was. Today
the replacement bridge is just named "Blackfriars Bridge", nobody bothered
writing "William Pitt" and being ignored.

It is still named Blackfriars Bridge to this day, even though the adjacent
railway station, named Blackfriars, is actually in the form of a bridge,
crossing the same river, if referring to _this_ bridge people call it
"Blackfriars Railway Bridge".

But even though consensus is the appropriate tool for figuring out what these
bridges are _called_ we certainly shouldn't use it to figure out when they
were built - what they're made of - which country they're in and so on.

------
kuba77
There's an area in Kuala Lumpur that is called "Off Jalan Bangsar" in Google
Maps (Jalan meaning street in Malay). It's obvious that Google's machine
learning algorithm took what is name of the nearest major street for a
district name.

[https://goo.gl/maps/hBk464FEZ8u](https://goo.gl/maps/hBk464FEZ8u)

~~~
eli
That seems reasonable to me. If locals had to refer to that general area and
not an exact address might they use the phrase "Off Jalan Bandsar"? If so I
think that _is_ its correct name.

------
jdietrich
Most maps are deliberately inaccurate in subtle ways. You can't copyright
facts, so cartographers use fictional places and deliberate errors to protect
their work. If these features appear on another map, then it's reasonable to
assume that they were plagiarised. Historically, cartographers have often
created settlements or roads where none actually exist; inventing fictional
names for districts or mis-spelling some place names may be a safer option in
the age of GPS and autonomous cars.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fictitious_entry](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fictitious_entry)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trap_street](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trap_street)

~~~
lucb1e
There may be very small and subtle things added, omitted or changed, but it's
not the case that "most maps" are completely inaccurate in subtle ways for
this reason. Trap streets are just that: single streets, usually tiny ones,
that are either completely fictitious or a mislabeled driveway or something.
Not whole neighbourhoods being made up.

------
Alex3917
Google maps tends to be better than most competing sources though. E.g. if you
try to figure out the boundaries between Riverdale, Kingsbridge, Spuyten
Duyvil, and Fieldston, Wikipedia just throws up its hands. But Google maps
really gives the most sensible definitions down to the block, even though
they’re highly irregular shapes.

Knowing all the commercial districts is a huge advantage for them. I’m betting
they can see how often people who live in each block spend in each commercial
district, as well as what all the buildings and shops are named.

------
dmurray
Google maps's districts in Dublin are all over the place. Looking around the
city centre at a certain magnification I can see names nobody ever uses, or
that refer to individual buildings or tiny areas, shown as if they describe
entire areas of the city. Maryland, Hybreasal, Cathal Brugha Barracks -
roughly where I'd expect to see signs for The Coombe, Kilmainham, and Harold's
Cross. If I zoom out, labels for Kilmainham and Harold's Cross appear. If I
zoom in, Cathal Brugha Barracks changes from the "district" font to the font
identifying a single landmark, and moves a couple of blocks to where the
building actually is.

This must be one of the hard problems for computers, though it doesn't seem
like it should be.

~~~
thinkingemote
Could they be the official but unused townlands areas?

~~~
dmurray
Good guess, but no. The names I mentioned don't appear here [0] as townlands,
baronies or civil parishes.

[0][https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_townlands_of_County_...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_townlands_of_County_Dublin)

------
imsofuture
Google decided to rename the street that I live on (and get rid of my actual
address) a few years ago. It took about 2 years for my correction to be
approved.

It was really fun directing people "oh it's really easy to get here but don't
use google maps".

------
CPLX
I've been a proud member of the greater RAMBO community for years. It's a real
and thriving community nestled between DUMBO and DOBRO and don't let anyone
tell you different.

~~~
Asooka
t/l note: Dobro means Good in most slavic languages.

------
cwmma
Reminds me of the effort to get people in Boston to map the neighborhood
boundaries

[https://bostonography.com/2012/crowdsourced-neighborhood-
bou...](https://bostonography.com/2012/crowdsourced-neighborhood-boundaries-
part-one-consensus/)

You've got a weirder situation in Cambridge, where there are 'official
neighborhoods' which everybody ignores (except for maybe Cambridgeport) and
instead divides the city into squares.

------
ibdf
I asked for my city's government for a clearly defined line of where a
neighborhood begins and ends, and they told me the local government did not
name the neighborhoods but real estate did. Looks like google in this case is
doing the same thing, hopefully their naming approach is not political or
money driven as it is for real estate companies, that will extend the
"borders" of a neighborhood to make properties price rise.

------
dredmorbius
_...The pattern proposed to replace the numerical avenues in the Richmond and
Sunset was simple. The streets would run Arguello, Borca, Coronado, De Soto...
to Zamorano for 26th Avenue. Some of the proposed names had historical
significance; others were Spanish names that fit the pattern. After the 26th
letter, the pattern would be Spanish saints, so that 27th Avenue would be San
Antonio and 47th Avenue would be Santa Ynez. Unable to find a saint 's name
for K, Q, W or Z the Commission had two streets left over and recommended
Alcatraz and La Playa to end the sequence._

 _After the proposal had its first reading before the Board of Supervisors on
November 8, 1909, the western neighborhoods had an immediate hostile reaction.
The more populated Richmond District took the lead and fiery orators were
chosen to speak out at the Board meeting a week later. When the Board met on
November 15, the speakers from the two western neighborhoods decried the idea
of changing streets to these "unpronounceable" Spanish names. Orators got up
and berated the Board for "selling out" to the Spanish we had so nobly
defeated only a few years previously in the Philippines. The over-riding
sentiment was that the accepting of these names would be a humiliation and
henceforth the Richmond and Sunset would be mocked as "Spanish Town". Despite
the vigorous oratory, the Board of Supervisors voted 12 to 5 to accept the
recommended changes._

 _Outraged, the residents of the western avenues got organized to fight this
imposition of Spanish names on their streets...._

"Spanish Town"

[http://www.outsidelands.org/street-
names.php](http://www.outsidelands.org/street-names.php)

------
Piskvorrr
Yup. I see these "synthetic" place names popping up lately. Probably machine-
learned from business listings near location, sometimes with bizarre results.

------
personjerry
Interesting article, but I can't take the thesis seriously, given there seems
to be no proof that Google Maps was the "leader" in the renaming.

------
Rebelgecko
It's hard to say what makes a neighborhood nickname "real", but when I use
Google to search for one of the "neighborhoods" near me and the first results
is a forum discussion of "what the hell is <neighborhood> in Google maps, and
why is it centered in swampland?"... then it's probably not a "real" area

~~~
nixpulvis
I think there's an important distinction between searching for a "nickname"
and showing lines on the map.

~~~
Rebelgecko
Yeah, the 2 particular neighborhoods near me are ones that don't draw the
bounds when you click on them in Google maps. Its a little annoying because it
covers up map space that could be better utilized. But it would also be funny
if a neighborhood name last used on streetcar timetables 100 years ago made a
resurgence because Google maps happened to slurp up the right (or wrong)
database of location names.

------
gumboshoes
In San Diego, Google Maps uses the names of unremarkable apartment buildings
and other multi-unit developments to label whole neighborhoods. Nobody uses
those names but it's been like that for years. (Check out Hillcrest and
University Heights by adjusting your zoom to the right level and those dumb
names will pop up.)

~~~
dsnuh
I've noticed this before too. It has all the real names for these areas that
people use, but with so much noise thrown in.

I'm happy to see my old stomping grounds of Golden Hill are regulated to about
6 blocks now in Google Maps. It's all Golden Heights and South Park now.
"Golden Hill" encompassed everything now known as South Park at one time
afaik, but it had a reputation, so they started calling part of it South Park
and selling properties for a lot more.

------
crosrefitlaj
Isn’it what gazetteers are for? [https://www.census.gov/geo/maps-
data/data/gazetteer.html](https://www.census.gov/geo/maps-
data/data/gazetteer.html)

------
eruci
Seems like the heart of the "East Cut" is on the intersection of Beale and
Howard:
[https://geocoder.ca/Beale+and+Howard+San+Francisco](https://geocoder.ca/Beale+and+Howard+San+Francisco)

The wisdom of the crowds puts this location in the following Neighborhoods:
[https://geocoder.ca/37.78992,-122.39427](https://geocoder.ca/37.78992,-122.39427)

1\. Rincon Hill,San Francisco 2\. Chinatown 3\. San Francisco,CA

Where does Google come up with these names?

~~~
thesandlord
Google didn't come up with the name.

[https://sf.curbed.com/2017/6/5/15730564/rincon-hill-east-
cut...](https://sf.curbed.com/2017/6/5/15730564/rincon-hill-east-cut-san-
francisco)

Rincon Hill is the only name on that list that makes sense. Chinatown is no
where near this neighborhood.

------
Jommi
This is especially funny in low google-activity/population areas, such as
Finland, or even China.

I've been able to create/edit/remove cafes, restaurants, roads and businesses
by just filling a simple change form. In a few minutes I receive an email that
the change has gone through and anyone can see it live.

What a wonderful system. (:

...and this is without even going into the incompetent mess that is bilingual
road/place names in Finland. 10 years since the first complaint and it's still
not fixed.

------
mannykannot
It's not just Google (though automation, through skimping on the hard-to-
automate activity of effective verification, has clearly accelerated it.)
Mapmakers insert small errors into their maps as a sort of watermark. In one
case, a made-up place name was added to a map of the Adirondacks region of New
York. When it appeared later on a rival's map, it turned out that the name had
been adopted when a guy built a house nearby, because it was on the first map.

~~~
joshuaheard
I read an article about that a while ago. Apparently map makers were inserting
fake towns into their maps to see if their maps had been wrongfully copied.

------
FactolSarin
Similar things happen in unincorporated areas. I live out in the country, and
I remember a year or two ago, a place-name appeared on Google Maps calling the
area "Mary's Grove," which makes some kind of sense to me as a local, even
though I've never heard anyone refer to the area as that, but it disappeared
as mysteriously as it appeared after a while.

Now it says I live in "Warlick," and I have no clue where that name came from.

------
httpz
I've been working in offices a few blocks away from "The East Cut" and I never
heard of it. Google's SF office is actually in the East Cut. I wonder how many
Google employees there actually heard of it.

Also the area is mostly office buildings. The few residential buildings are
mostly high end luxury apartments. I doubt most residents are even aware of
the neighborhood nonprofit organization.

------
nsxwolf
What does it actually mean? Is it a play on "Tenderloin", because it's like
another cut of meat, but to the east?

~~~
syncsynchalt
The article explains it was the name of a 19th-century grading project in the
area.

------
josefresco
"It’s degrading to the reputation of our area"

How so? I missed how or why this is upsetting to local residents.

~~~
Brakenshire
People don’t like having their area renamed from underneath them. Probably it
makes them feel alienated from their home area.

------
zavi
It's called East Cut, I live here. NYTimes is running out of subjects to be
angry about.

------
raverbashing
> Yet how Google arrives at its names in maps is often mysterious. The company
> declined to detail how some place names came about, though some appear to
> have resulted from mistakes by researchers, rebrandings by real estate
> agents — or just outright fiction.

So if they made a mistake they can't own up to it (like the Fiskhorn one)?

------
fiiv
Perhaps it's a social experiment in this case? Seems like quite a departure
from the existing names for that particular neighbourhood.

------
pytyper2
one task governments perform is defining borders.

------
qrbLPHiKpiux
If you tell a lie long enough it becomes truth.

~~~
microcolonel
Well, it's like adverse possession: at some point it is more responsible to
uphold the most current claim, even if it intersects an existing one.

------
sonnyblarney
Because of the power of mind share, Google has the power to control borders.

The border between Israel and the West Bank is an odd one.

'Both sides' have their view of it.

But if 7 Billion people on planet earth grow up seeing one version of the
border, it's what they will come to believe as 'true' and effectively support
- particularly those in modern nations that might have influence.

China is aware of this and they control any maps their citizens will ever see.

"Of course all that ocean between Philippines and Vietnam belongs to China!"
is what most Chinese citizens will assume, after all, they saw it on their
maps growing up. While the rest of us will have seen a different map.

~~~
paidleaf
> China is aware of this and they control any maps their citizens will ever
> see.

Everyone is aware of it. Maps have always been political. Maps and borders are
political creations. Why is it that whenever a controversial topic comes up,
people always bring up china? Every HN thread that has a controversial topic,
someone always sneaks in a reference to china?

> "Of course all that ocean between Philippines and Vietnam belongs to China!"
> is what most Chinese citizens will assume, after all, they saw it on their
> maps growing up. While the rest of us will have seen a different map.

You act like there are two maps. One china is pushing and another everyone
else agrees to. China, Vietnam, Philippines, Indonesia and every nation in
ASEAN have their own maps.

The issue with maps has always existed. Whether it is current - crimea
(russia/ukraine), sea of japan/east sea ( japan/korea ) or historical -
hawaiians/inuit/nativesc vs european colonizers. Or the remnants of
colonization like india/pakistan or artificial nations created by european
colonizers in africa and the middle east which has created ethnic border
issues.

Pretty much every nation today has map issues. Even within a nation there are
map issues ( like the renaming of mount denali ).

~~~
knockingat3am
And like clockwork, China _isn 't_ even singled out, isn't mentioned first,
but instantly it's pointed out how there's really nothing particularly bad
going on there, for over half a century. Even bending so far to pretend this
is a "controversial subject", and as if most controversial subjects didn't
mention China at all. The latter is an easily demonstrable falsehood, uttered
in the interest of discussion hygiene. You can't make that shit up -- but I'm
sure someone could crawl and visualize it one day. Though I guess one could
simply read archives from the 1930s and get the same in more better language.

Other nations may have map issues, but China, in addition to concentration
camps, really has _map issues_.

[https://www.scmp.com/news/china/society/article/2128124/marr...](https://www.scmp.com/news/china/society/article/2128124/marriott-
sacks-employee-who-liked-twitter-post-tibet-independence)

> As for the Marriott employee who “liked” the Twitter post by Friends of
> Tibet, Smith said disciplinary proceedings had been started. “Due to the
> mistake of an individual employee, our official [Twitter] account wrongly
> ‘liked’ the tweet supporting Tibet independence and misled the public. [We]
> have now suspended this employee and dismissal proceedings are under way,”
> he was quoted as saying.

Well, except that's not what happened. I couldn't find the one that was
originally posted on HN, that article was much better, but this one has the
tweet in question:

[http://www.hoteliermiddleeast.com/33151-marriott-employee-
fi...](http://www.hoteliermiddleeast.com/33151-marriott-employee-fired-for-
twitter-error-speaks-out/)

He didn't make an "error" even. He liked a positive tweet that thanked them
for something he didn't understand and had no instructions about. Off with his
head, and everybody do the pre-emptive obedience dance, go! When something
like this walks the planet, when something like this feeds, then it's not the
worst idea to mention it or things related in spirit to it at every occasion,
especially whenever you meet new people or new crowds, as a litmus test.

Just like you might have a dinner party in the early 1930s and, then you
mention Nazi violence, and a guest mentions that people have just different
ideas about how to best go about internal politics. You smile, thank them for
their comment, and never invite them again. You don't "leave politics out"
when concerned with serious things, unless you're either putting all your
stakes on the Nazis winning and erasing all records, like they would have done
in Eastern Europe had they not lost the war, or simply aren't thinking that
far. As I said, many historical archives are testament to that kinda being the
norm, but culture of the present and last half century, uncountable movies and
speeches, kind of seem to suggest it's not the norm we end up thinking fondly
of in hindsight. They're not the people we wish we had the courage to be.
They're the ones we're ashamed of and euphemize, instead of just mentioning
their name and some kind of glow filling our hearts. Oh well.

~~~
dang
We've banned this account for using HN primarily for political battle.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

------
xamuel
Something else Google Maps does: it calls religious buildings "businesses" (if
no-one has claimed them, then you'll see a "Claim this business" link when you
click on them). This is a huge libel against those religions. Churches,
mosques, synagogues, buddhist temples, all are "businesses" to Google.

~~~
ceejayoz
You've got an absurdly broad definition of "libel" that would make calling a
group of women "guys" slanderous.

