Google relabling Canadian parks as 'state parks'
Some Google Maps users in Canada are claiming provincial parks have been labelled as 'state' parks.
Do you guys need any geologists? I’d love to get out of this country.
We have quite a lot of geology.
Just label the US as South/Lesser Canada.
The Gulf of Lesser Canada does have a certain ring to it...
from "Not Evil" to "Prime Evil" in just a couple decades.
decades
Years
They've ramped it up in recent years, sure, but I think they been dormantly evil since they came on the scene and we just didn't realize it until the hooks were in deep.
Perfect strategy for this kinda thing, and now they can just be brazen about it. Kinda like a certain red party in a certain shithole country.
If people are wondering why Google is simping to Trump, they have been convicted of being a monopoly and the antitrust action is now in the penalty phase.
The action started under Trump I, was vigorously pursued by Biden's Lena Kahn and the conviction secured. Now all that's left is to decide the penalty, which could range from a strongly written letter to a breakup of the company.
It is really to bad Canada is not going after them yet.
I'm getting Microsoft, Clinton & Bush vibes here...
They show up as provincial parks for me?
Some of them are listed as state when you bring up their card.
They're done this globally apparently. They just got rid of the provincial park option and defaults all government operated nature reserves, of any government, as "state parks".
Seems very shortsighted and with a disregard for other countries. Extremely confusing move by google.
For me, using English (GB) as localization, they appear as national parks. Maybe it's the term they use for English (US) set phones 🤔 Im located in Finland as well so.
Even the ones in US show up as national for me. Also checked the gulf of mexico, it's still that for me.
That would make sense if we used English (US), but we use English (CA). Just a brief check of the parks in my area shows all the national parks are labeled "National Park", the provincial parks are almost all "State Park[s]" with the occasional "Park", and the regional parks have no consistent or logical pattern but I counted at least 5 different park labels.
yea, 'state park', as in 'operated by the state'
I can see why they did this, but its really stupid, especially at a time like this. i've reported half a dozen parks.
The problem is that for us there is a big difference between municipally run, province-run, and federally run parks. We also have private parks, privately owned but publically accessible parks, and of course, amusement parks.
Every canadian should switch to Organic Maps for national security purposes.
Does that matter if your os is still Android (like most people are)?
It will prompt you to use Google's Maps or any other map program you have installed when you clock on an address. You may have to reset the default program for map links if you had more than one option and chose Google Maps as the option in the past, though.
Came here to talk about this as well.
Canada really needs to develop its technology to get off of oppressive American tech. We need to work with other countries and develop our own tech to combat this. Absolutely insulting. Just a little “oopsie” after over a decade of not having mislabelled parks? The stink is showing.
Open source options exist. We just need more people using OpenStreetMaps and shit.
A government funded utility that utilizes regional GIS and aerial mapping would go a long way. Google's got the upper hand on directions and traffic reporting though, so that would take more time to make effective. A lot of that is genuinely due to the number of users that exist on the platform though. I think if you tried to implement similar location data analysis for government infrastructure, people would be up in arms at the idea, despite being perfectly happy to provide the same data to Google.
It's unfortunate that Google is as prevalent a default service as they are, but it's hard to ignore how good a service they offer, and how long the development period has been to get them there.
The geodata and related open source technology to edit, review, and host it is already available from openstreetmap community
We have. Only it’s not well known, because of Google’s monopoly.
Then let’s start naming them and putting them out there. If they’re just maps but we need guis for apps on these, then it’s a great time to start that process and get developers in on it, preferably open sourced if possible.
My guess is there would be lots of developers willing to work on a project like this to help distance us from America.
I mean I knew Americans weren't great at geography, I didn't realize it was this bad.
What I don't get is some are labeled park and some state parks.
Can you please go burn down the White House again?
Jesus fucking Christ already!
The orange butt plug and fElon need to keep their fucking hands off Canada.
May as well start calling temples "churches" and change all speed limits to Mph since it seems we're in a "being wrong" contest.
I'm not seeing this at all.
Provincial Parks in BC are all still called 'xyz provincial park'.
If you explicitly search for 'state park' all the provincial ones come up, but there's nothing in any of their details mentioning 'state' in anyway.
/edit: found it.
It's subtle, but it's there.
Example:
Man, all these tech giants keep making convenient "mistakes"....
Just checked and sure enough, nearby provincial parks are labelled 'State Park'
I wouldn't be surprised if the orange utan asked Google to "make a mistake" on purpose, to float the idea and see what would happen.
What's the issue here? Are they not State parks?
What seems most likely to me is that some of these had the State Park category on Google Maps for a long time, and now it's being noticed. They say the "Provincial Park" category was removed, which implies it used to be an option.
There's a bit of variation between types of park, even found a provincial park that is labeled both national park and just park, depending on where in the UI you find it.
Labeling was probably never reliably strictly correct, but removing Provincial Park as a category is a little hostile, considering the timing. (Assuming it used to be an option, and Samantha in the video isn't entirely mistaken.)
...actually, this is at the bottom of the article:
“If you ever see the extremely rare ‘provincial park’ used as a category, this was imported automatically by Google using the old Google Map Maker categories. They have long since simplified the categories (there used to be many hundreds of obscure categories) and provincial park is no longer an option when adding or editing parks,” she said.
It doesn't make much sense to remove "Provincial Park" when there are so many specific variations when you go further down to regional, municipal, city, community, etc. parks and they have a bunch of very specific (and often unrelated) park categories. Here are a few that are near me:
The app is showing provincial and national for me. I'm in NS and have a few around the city and they aren't mislabeled from what I see.🤷🏻♂️
Either I'm the odd one out or they changed it back.
Edit: found one, how have you been reporting this?
Just says Park for me?
Just the provincial parks? I was about to get out the pitchforks, but if it doesn't include national parks that seems unrelated to the drama.
What?