![]() Timothy Boscarino, a Detroit city planner, traced Google’s use of those names to a map posted online around 2002 by a few locals. Those names have been on Google Maps since at least 2012. In Detroit, some residents have been baffled by Google’s map of their city, which is blanketed with neighborhood monikers like NW Goldberg, Fishkorn and the Eye. In New York, Vinegar Hill Heights, Midtown South Central (now NoMad), BoCoCa (for the area between Boerum Hill, Cobble Hill and Carroll Gardens), and Rambo (Right Around the Manhattan Bridge Overpass) have appeared on and off in Google Maps. The service has also disseminated place names that are just plain puzzling. Many of Google’s decisions have far-reaching consequences, with the maps driving increased traffic to quiet neighborhoods and once almost provoking an international incident in 2010 after it misrepresented the boundary between Costa Rica and Nicaragua. Other users with a history of accurate changes said their updates to maps take effect instantly. Yet some submissions are ruled upon by people with little local knowledge of a place, such as contractors in India, said one former Google Maps employee, who declined to be named because he was not authorized to speak publicly. A Google spokeswoman declined further comment. People can submit changes, which are reviewed by Google employees. Google said it created its maps from third-party data, public sources, satellites and, often most important, users. 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. 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. In a survey of 271 neighbors that he organized recently, he said, 90 percent disliked the name. “It’s degrading to the reputation of our area,” said Tad Bogdan, who has lived in the neighborhood for 14 years. And news organizations referred to the vicinity by that term. Real-estate listings beckoned prospective tenants to the East Cut. The name soon spilled over into the physical world, too. The peculiar moniker immediately spread digitally, from hotel sites to dating apps to Uber, which all use Google’s map data. This spring, it was suddenly rebranded on Google Maps to a name few had heard: the East Cut. SAN FRANCISCO - 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. ![]()
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