Google Earth,
A few points for your consideration:
1) Iranians around the world have sent you petitions, letters, direct requests including an official request for a clarification of the decision from the National Iranian American Council.
Your decision to post an indirect response on this obscure blog instead of directly engaging and explaining your decision in a professional and public manner does a disservice to your well-earned positive reputation.
2) Your utilization of a "local use" rule, even if legitimate would require some form of data backing it up. Is the measurement related to population? what "local use" threshold are you holding yourself to? (33%? 5%? or is a handful of 'locals' enough?)
Are you considering bordering shoreline? Is the GDP of the populated countries part of the measurement? Are you conducting polls? How often do you update your "local use" standard - or once decided, is the usage then fixed for eternity?
What is your metric? and where is the evidence to back it up? In the case of the Persian Gulf which is the biggest issue currently being discussed regarding Google Earth (Aside from the Israeli/Palestinian town name - not a body of water, but also goes unaddressed in this blog post) - you fail to recognize that the name Persian Gulf was first coined (local use) by the Arabic tribes to describe the gulf they would have to cross to get to the "Persians".
3) This decision also strikes me as rather weak and somewhat cowardly as it indicates a willingness by Google to accede to artificial political pressure rather then to achieve Google's mission of providing accurate information for it's consumers.
Your flippant use of the hypothetical renaming of the Pacific Ocean by a random monarch strikes me as a perfect example of this weak argument. It is a badly disguised analogy to Gamal-Abdul Nasser's pan-Arabist political ideology that lead to the invention of the term "Arabian Gulf".
Which brings up another question - if a tyrant forces the use of a particular term by his people (lets say under penalty of death) - would that population's usage then qualify under your 'local use' standard? Is this not then an encouragement for Tyrants to leave a lasting legacy by manipulating Google Earth's arbitrary policy?
If Google Earth had existed just 40 years ago, maybe we would have had such lofty bodies of water as the Pol Pot River, Idi Amin Lake, and the Northern Stalin Sea. Maybe even the Red Mao Ocean (1.3 billion Chinese after all).
In my personal estimation, based on the April 8th date of this post (months after official requests for an explanation), this explanation reflects a poorly thought-out and ill-conceived excuse after-the-fact to sweep the issue under the (Persian) rug and to provide Google executives with a face-saving PR talking-point.
I suspect this effort will be a far-cry short of what is needed to silence your critics.