I’m Canadian. And that American President—you know the one I’m talking about—did a stinging but important favour for Canada and all Western tech leaders when he recently pulled another petulant stunt and issued an order to rename Lake Ontario on our mutual border.

He reminded us how dangerously dependent the world is on a version of the truth overseen by American tech bros and their corporate software systems.

See, I think the far more interesting news than the sharpie-grade renaming of Lake Ontario itself was who snapped to attention and immediately redrew their digital maps: Google^[1].

I use Google extensively. Less so, lately, because their search is increasingly crusted in AI slop results. But I do pay for their cloud storage, I have been a Gmail user since the you-need-an-invite days, and I have literally hundreds of thousands of my photos stored on their servers. I use their app to translate when I travel. I download Chrome to every new device. And I track my fitness, budget, and professional life in their online office suite.

This level of use is built on trust, a trust that had been forged across decades and until recently had given me only occasional skeptical pause to doubt it.

Then Google altered the reality of my country’s sovereignty.

I’m hardly a major client. I use Google for personal and small business needs.  But this week I am questioning that choice with an abruptness I would not have thought possible even just six months ago.

The favour?

Thousands of big and small companies in Canada make use of American software and online platforms, and as the owner of those companies bend the knee to a corrupt and petty government, Canadians—and non-Americans around the world—are being reminded just how unidirectional that relationship really is.  They are all learning that if reality can be changed and forced upon the world by simply updating a piece of software by the people beholden to a broken government, then maybe that trust wasn’t worth giving in the first place. Maybe it’s worth the hard work of re-evaluating.

It’s a tough lesson, but a necessary reminder.

My trust in these companies took a huge hit this week, and I’m posting this blog for the first time from a browser that is not Chrome as I contemplate how to untangle my two decade relationship with a company I no longer believe understands reality.