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A comment on Google changes Palestinian location from 'Territories' to 'Palestine' . Parent comment

Re:Google changes Palestinian location from 'Territories' to... by sp332 on Friday May 03, 2013 @02:39PM (#5651787)
How could Google avoid taking a stance? Either they call it one thing or the other. Or they could call every contested bit of land Narnia but then no one would be happy with them.
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Re:Google changes Palestinian location from 'Territories' to... by gngeal on Friday May 03, 2013 @03:59PM (#5652290)
"How could Google avoid taking a stance? Either they call it one thing or the other."

Perhaps avoiding taking a stance could take the form of following the current practice of major players (UN and others)...?

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Re:Google changes Palestinian location from 'Territories' to... by corin_ on Friday May 03, 2013 @04:29PM (#5652466)
Which is exactly what they've just done?
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Re:Google changes Palestinian location from 'Territories' to... by CatMtKing on Friday May 03, 2013 @03:53PM (#5652266)
I agree. The domain name is already in political territory. Maybe if domain names were by language instead of location...
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Re:Google changes Palestinian location from 'Territories' to... by tellarin on Friday May 03, 2013 @10:08PM (#5653646)
That would be nowhere easier.

Many languages have different names across populations. And people strongly identify to a specific nomenclature.

Also, many people speak multiple languages, languages that cross disputed borders, and languages spoken only by populations that want independence from the current states where they're located (e.g. Basque).

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Re:Google changes Palestinian location from 'Territories' to... by sses on Friday May 03, 2013 @10:18PM (#5653668)
That wouldn't solve or even sidestep any political issues. You've still got problems like: * ip geocoding to decide which language to serve the UI in * what do you call the languages? Chinese vs Traditional vs Simplified, or Farsi vs Parsi vs Persian, as mentioned elsewhere

And while political boundaries are messy, language boundaries are even more so. How do you decide dialect boundaries? And once you do, how do you decide which dialects get separate domains?

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