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As Google Maps Renames Neighborhoods, Residents Fume (nytimes.com)
An anonymous reader shares a report: For decades, the district south of downtown and alongside San Francisco Bay here was known as either Rincon Hill, South Beach or South of Market. This spring, it was suddenly rebranded on Google Maps to a name few had heard: the East Cut. The peculiar moniker immediately spread digitally, from hotel sites to dating apps to Uber, which all use Google's map data. The name soon spilled over into the physical world, too. Real-estate listings beckoned prospective tenants to the East Cut. And news organizations referred to the vicinity by that term.
"It's degrading to the reputation of our area," said Tad Bogdan, who has lived in the neighborhood for 14 years. In a survey of 271 neighbors that he organized recently, he said, 90 percent disliked the name. The swift rebranding of the roughly 170-year-old district is just one example of how Google Maps has now become the primary arbiter of place names. With decisions made by a few Google cartographers, the identity of a city, town or neighborhood can be reshaped, illustrating the outsize influence that Silicon Valley increasingly has in the real world.
"It's degrading to the reputation of our area," said Tad Bogdan, who has lived in the neighborhood for 14 years. In a survey of 271 neighbors that he organized recently, he said, 90 percent disliked the name. The swift rebranding of the roughly 170-year-old district is just one example of how Google Maps has now become the primary arbiter of place names. With decisions made by a few Google cartographers, the identity of a city, town or neighborhood can be reshaped, illustrating the outsize influence that Silicon Valley increasingly has in the real world.
Are they "official" names for neighborhoods?
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
"It's degrading to the reputation of our area," said Tad Bogdan, who has lived in the neighborhood for 14 years.
He should be happy they didn't decide to call it Poop Map!
Taking guns away from the 99% gives the 1% 100% of the power.
Google can just give every SF neighborhood a really awful name. West gash, Buttfungus grove, Trashpile drive, Stank avenue, etc, lowering property values until housing is affordable for mere mortals again!
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
Rincon Hill, South Beach and SOMA are all distinct neighborhoods, not different names for the same area as the article insinuates.
Real estate agents here try to rename areas all the time into 'micro neighborhoods' for out of towners who would, for example, rather move to 'Eureka Valley' than 'The Castro'. This isn't anything new and I would question whether Google did this and real estate agents followed, or if it's the other way around.
People that actually live here now and have lived here for any mount of time would never deign to utter the words "South Cut". That's just a stupid name in and of itself and has no meaning.
Residents Fume?
They should be glad it's not worse. I can imagine much worse names than East Cut which Google could give to a neighborhood.
I'll see your senator, and I'll raise you two judges.
s/Cupertino/Fruit Market/
google renamed the street I grew up on by eliding a t. some time later, when the city went to remake the street signs, I'm guessing they checked google maps for the spelling rather than the records and suddenly Patterson became Paterson. At one point my mother had collected a 19th century city registrar book that had all the properties delineated, (and the street name correctly spelled...)
there was even a short period of time when you could use street view to look at an old and new street sign within a block of each other and see both spellings in the wild.
-- it's ridiculous how many people misspell ridiculous... (damn, damn, damn...)
Here/Navteq maps have been using township names in my area. Not towns, townships. The township I live in has an obscure name that is completely unrelated to the town name. If it wasn't on my tax bill, I would have no idea it existed. However, Navteq uses that instead of the town name.
One of our competitors trademarked the term "hypothesis". From now on, we will call them "boneheaded ideas".
If they had done any research they would have found out that the community benefit district for that area, a local government agency, had renamed the area to the East Cut over a year ago.
They spend tax money on advertising it and probably went to google to get the name to reflect what the city wanted.
This was not some sudden change caused by google, nor an example of how google is a final arbitrator of names.
it is just another daily example of how the new york times is worth for journalism and its only value is in wiping down the street of San Francisco.
https://www.sfchronicle.com/ba...
They are trying to improve things. They want to increase the value of neighbourhoods and drive out everything that attracts the homeless.
First thing incomers do is Google up on the neighbourhood reviews and take a stroll through StreetView. If the area looks post-apocalyptic they'll go elsewhere. So they rebrand the neighbourhood with new names so no-one knows any better - Tenderloin becomes SunnyValley.
Vintage computer adverts: http://www.vintageadbrowser.com/computers-and-software-ads
If you've ever been to SFO quite frankly a number of those names wouldn't be descriptively inaccurate, either.
-Styopa
In the US official place names are tracked by the Census Bureau and the Postal Service.
You need to get a life if your identity hinges on the correct naming of your residence.
Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard