The world’s largest search engine, Google removed the Chinese name on Scarborough Shoal through their map service, Google Maps. The name for a South China shoal was quietly removed by the map service due to the bitter dispute by Beijing and Manila following an outcry from Filipinos.
According to Google Maps website, the shoal was referred as a rich fishing ground, and was earlier labelled as part of China’s Zhongsha island chain, that prompted an online campaign demanding that the Internet giant stop identifying the outcrop as part of Chinese territory.
Google Manila released the following statement through their official website: “We’ve updated Google Maps to fix the issue. We understand that geographic names can raise deep emotions which is why we worked quickly once this was brought to our attention,” Google’s office in Manila said in a statement.
The hotly-disputed Scarborough Shoal lies 220 kilometres (140 miles) off the main Philippine island of Luzon and 650 kilometres from Hainan island, the nearest major Chinese land mass.
The Chinese government controlled the shoal since the year 2012, following a brief standoff with the Philippines. Since then, the Philippines has accused the Chinese Coast Guard of harassing Filipino fishermen at the shoal, including robbing them their catch.