How could Google avoid taking a stance? Either they call it one thing or the other. Or they could call every contested bit of land Narnia but then no one would be happy with them.
Many languages have different names across populations. And people strongly identify to a specific nomenclature.
Also, many people speak multiple languages, languages that cross disputed borders, and languages spoken only by populations that want independence from the current states where they're located (e.g. Basque).
That wouldn't solve or even sidestep any political issues. You've still got problems like:
* ip geocoding to decide which language to serve the UI in
* what do you call the languages? Chinese vs Traditional vs Simplified, or Farsi vs Parsi vs Persian, as mentioned elsewhere
And while political boundaries are messy, language boundaries are even more so. How do you decide dialect boundaries? And once you do, how do you decide which dialects get separate domains?
