(Credit: Pixabay)
Google is taking names and giving them an unsolicited upgrade.
Places like the East Cut (formerly San Francisco’s Rincon Hill, South Beach or South of Market neighborhoods), Brooklyn’s BoCoCa (aka between Boerum Hill, Cobble Hill and Carroll Gardens), and Detroit’s Fishkorn (not to be confused by the old name, Fiskhorn) are all the work of Google Maps suddenly changing names, according to the New York Times.
Though some residents are up in arms over typos and seemingly random names becoming the dominant moniker of their stomping grounds, others boast that Google’s naming policies–which take into account third-party data, user requests and public sources–are finally, literally, putting them on the map.
As the Times points out, one community association for a 50-block area in San Francisco called Balboa Hollow proclaimed to any naysayers: “We’re on the internet; so we must be real,” via their website.
Google Maps launched in 2005 and, as of this May, 13 years later, 63 percent of people who referred to a map on their photo or tablet were using Google as their guide. [NYT]
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