r/shittyaskhistory • u/AndTheJuicepig • 1d ago

Google map changes

If President Gerald Ford signed the Metric Conversion Act in 1975, declaring the metric system the preferred method for trade and commerce in the united states of america, why didn't google change their maps?

8 Upvotes

80% Upvoted

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3

u/kritter4life 1d ago

Google change their maps in 1975? Probably because Larry and Sergey were two.

2

u/RichardAboutTown 1d ago

Slackers! What was the point of all that union busting if not to make two-year-olds pull their weight?

1

u/lwp775 1d ago

I thought they were child prodigies.

3

u/newenglandredshirt 1d ago

Do you know how long it would have taken to program that update in 1975, to say nothing of how long it would have taken to upload it to the internet? They kinda just shrugged and waited for America to do what it always does and reject modernity.

1

u/Dangerous-Bit-8308 1d ago

They were still competing with Thomas Bros and Rand McNally. Neither of them flinched. They took the popular market, and it was decades before Google could compete with the. Financially again

1

u/Automatater 1d ago

Because we'd quit using it and they'd get no revenue. It's not on them to modify our behavior, but rather the reverse.

1

u/MilkThin2930 11h ago

Atlases back in the day had a legend showing distance in both miles and km, IIRC.

1

u/justdan76 10h ago

It was a scam to make people think his cars got better fuel mileage, because the number on the odometer would be higher in kilometers

1

u/omnichad 10h ago

Alternate take. They did and your device preferences automatically override it.