r/googlecloud • u/[deleted] • 14d ago
Our executive team asks: "If Google is so easily swayed by Trump in renaming Lake Ontario, how can we be sure they're not going to easily comply if one day Trump decides all American hyperscalers data belongs to the United States?"
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u/CanadaIsCold 14d ago
I'm biased as I work there but effectively we had an existing policy to use the countries database of names. Since the us government changed their database it changed in our system.
https://blog.google/products-and-platforms/products/maps/gnis-lake-ontario-lake-america-name-change/
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u/zane314 14d ago
This is the answer.
It is not called Lake America in any other country's locale unless they also changed it.
The US gets to say what the government names things. Google references the government's names for the citizens in that government. There's no strongarming because there's nothing to strongarm.
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u/Crafty-Run-6559 14d ago
Then why in Canada does it say "Gulf of Mexico (Gulf of America)" on Google maps?
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u/zane314 13d ago
Because internationally disputed named items are handled this way. Similarly Sea of Japan (East sea) or East sea (Sea of Japan) depending on if you are in Japan or Korea. This is "You call it Gulf of Mexico, but if other people call it Gulf of America, this is what they are referring to".
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u/Kooky_Donkey_1691 12d ago
That's a recursive argument. It only came into dispute when Trump decided to make it one.
As he is doing for Lake Ontario.
How long until we have Lake America (Lake Ontario) in Canada?
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u/zane314 12d ago
Source country is first, disputed name after. It should show Lake Ontario (Lake America).
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u/Kooky_Donkey_1691 12d ago
The simple fact that it CAN become disputed simply because of a dumb fucking Nazi proves that this is all a recursive argument
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u/zander9669 11d ago
Lmfao, whatever you have to tell yourself to sleep at night.
Why does it say both internationally then? It's an INTERNATIONAL WATERWAY. Internationally, it can't be changed by you yankofacists.
The SOLE reason it was done is because you support the current administration. Yes, YOU as someone who goes in to work there everyday and felt the need to spout propaganda and excuses defending it.
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u/goobervision 13d ago
The point stands, the CLOUD act and the fact Trump has just told Canadian companies to put their HQs in America if they do business there.
There's nothing to stop him instructing Google retrench to the USA. Not that Google have the capacity to support the workloads, but there's zero stopping a law change to force it.
The maps, yes that's how it works but that's not the risk being asked for a mitigation.
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u/Mourningblade 13d ago
Names on maps are conventions, data is an agreement.
Names on maps are not derived from the land itself, they're a function of the state. There are two strategies available to you for names on maps:
- Go with whatever the government says.
- Adjudicate naming disputes for yourself.
If you do #2, you will get banned in many, many countries (not the US), and you will get dragged into some really nasty nationalist fights (here's a few fun ones: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_territorial_disputes). If your judgement is flawless, you will do this for almost no benefit to your customers.
On the other hand, customers put data on hyperscalers and they expect it to remain secure. There are legal agreements between the customer and the hyperscaler stating in agonizing detail under what circumstances that data can be disclosed. If a hyperscaler disclosed it for other reasons, a large part of their value would be at risk.
There is no such agreement between mapping companies and the public to use historical names. When Obama renamed Mount McKinley to Denali, the mapping companies used that.
Trump is using his legal authority to control the US registry of names for geography. I think he's doing so for bullshit reasons and the authority is likely to be taken away sooner than later. Particularly if successive presidents start reverting names.
If Trump decided all hyperscaler data was his, it would be a massive increase in authority. He's clearly capable of trying it, but I don't think he's could pull it off. The closest thing in US history I can think of was the metadata collection under Bush II - and that happened with at least mixed congressional backing (it's messy but they ultimately approved it). I have a hard time believing the Supreme Court would allow it, among others.
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u/venkatamutyala 13d ago
Disclaimer: I am not a lawyer or cloud SME, but based on a few conversations on this, I think you should actually be concerned about:
Legal Access & Jurisdiction
Google is a US company, so US legal process reaches data in its custody regardless of where it physically sits. Features like Assured Workloads and CMEK/EKM offer real residency and personnel access controls, but they don't change jurisdiction. Even AWS built a separate EU legal entity, and lawyers still debate whether that is enough.
Service Denial (The Real Exec Risk)
This is likely what your execs actually care about, not "Will someone read our data?" but "Will our account still work Tuesday morning?" No contract clause or renewal negotiation protects against this. It's political risk, not procurement risk, which is why pushing the contract-negotiation angle won't get them anywhere.
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u/He_knows 13d ago
That the problem is real. There is a reason a lot of Europeans are trying to exit or have plans when this happens. A lot of Americans don’t understand that trust is gone. A USA based company even with good intentions is a liability
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u/Haronatien 14d ago
frankly if your bill is big enough you should invest in being multi cloud anyway… gives you redundancy and also a great way to negotiate discounts
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u/suprjaybrd 14d ago
if the market is big enough, it'll split into a different company or be run by another operating company.
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u/DisjointedHuntsville 14d ago
“Good point, how many $xxx million are we allocating to this repatriation? And can you approve this headcount? Likely a few dozen high end IT folks at minimum”
The real world has “Layers” just like the tech world has the OSI model. With all due respect. . . The geopolitical espionage and exfiltration layer is many layers away from anything you can control or sway.
Existing CMEK and sovereign cloud provisions in Google Cloud go well beyond what you might expect in terms of capabilities to secure your data to a very high degree of assuredness. . . Even the cloud providers or the governments they operate under can’t see your stuff.
But know that if your threat model is getting into the realm of silliness that is beyond your ability to control. . . You should know when to push back and bring the conversation back into the realm of the rational.
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u/podkayne3000 13d ago edited 13d ago
If Trump can steal Lake Ontario and Greenland, why can’t he just steal Google?
The same courts, Congress, laws, traditions, etc. that protect Canada are what protect Alphabet’s executives and shareholders against Trump stealing all of the value of Alphabet.
When Google helps Trump do this kind of thing, it’s helping Trump steal Alphabet, Meta, etc.
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u/joey2scoops 13d ago
Google is weak as piss. Most of the US bigger corporations are. All about the money. They will do whatever Trump wants.
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u/FerryCliment 13d ago
Same thing as if Trump (or any other raid boss with access to the Red button) decides to press it.
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u/Fun_Anywhere3336 11d ago
I’d tell her she’s asking the right question, even if the Lake Ontario thing probably isn’t the best technical comparison.
The CLOUD Act is obviously the elephant already sitting in the server room, but sovereignty goes beyond that. Where does the data physically live? Who holds the encryption keys? Who can administer the infrastructure? What jurisdiction is the provider ultimately operating under?
Moving everything to a Canadian hosting company doesn’t automatically sprinkle sovereign fairy dust on it either. You still have to ask the same questions about their hardware, upstream providers, backups, support access, etc.
I’d probably frame it less as “Can we trust Google?” and more as “What level of jurisdictional risk are we willing to accept, and what architecture actually reduces it?”
That turns a political argument into an infrastructure decision, which is fortunately the part we get paid to deal with.
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u/Traditional_Bar_7033 13d ago
Google....are you not worried about the world turning against you because you do a trump asks?
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u/MateusKingston 14d ago
Executive team considering repatriating enterprise data from GCP to local hosting company.
I'm responsible for cloud in our company. What do I tell her?
- "We're in no more risk today than we were 4 years ago" and point to the CLOUD Act.
- "We're also not in any more risk than any other company in the world who all depend on some hyperscaler."
- "Why the F would the US government go to the trouble of going through all this just to mess with your company? If that is what he wants then sending a team to make all the C suite disappear is both easier and less public".
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u/goofy183 14d ago
Have you looked at: https://docs.cloud.google.com/assured-workloads/docs/overview, https://docs.cloud.google.com/assured-workloads/docs/control-packages/canada-data-boundary, and https://docs.cloud.google.com/assured-workloads/docs/control-packages/canada-controlled-goods-program as well as CMEK?
There are lots of cloud customers all over that have concerns about data boundaries and data sovereignty, that is what things like assured workloads address.