MapQuest's App Surges to No. 1 In Navigation After Refusing to Rename Lake Ontario (techcrunch.com)
- Reference: 0185324464
- News link: https://news.slashdot.org/story/26/08/31/1646204/mapquests-app-surges-to-no-1-in-navigation-after-refusing-to-rename-lake-ontario
- Source link: https://techcrunch.com/2026/08/31/mapquests-app-surges-to-no-1-in-navigation-after-refusing-to-rename-lake-ontario/
> The "OG of online mapping," as the company calls itself, [3]announced on Thursday that it would not change the name of Lake Ontario on its maps to Lake America, despite Trump's [4]executive order directing the U.S. Department of the Interior to update the lake's name in the U.S. geographic naming service. As a result, MapQuest's mobile app downloads soared, sending the iOS app to the No. 4 position on the U.S. App Store's Top Charts for apps (not including games) as of Monday morning on the U.S. east coast.
>
> MapQuest also reached the No. 8 position overall in the U.S. App Store across both apps and games, and it became the No. 1 Navigation app in the United States. In Canada's App Store, the app reached No. 2 overall as of Sunday evening. The 30-year-old company remarked that it received "hundreds of thousands" of new downloads since its decision to keep the name Lake Ontario in place, and saw its app's usage climb to 50 times above its normal levels.
"We took the same approach we did with the Gulf of Mexico: be part of the conversation, and give people an app that keeps the names they're familiar with," said Doug Berger, general manager of MapQuest, in [5]a statement . "Hundreds of thousands of people signaled to us this weekend that we got it right by downloading our app."
[1] https://techcrunch.com/2026/08/31/mapquests-app-surges-to-no-1-in-navigation-after-refusing-to-rename-lake-ontario/
[2] https://tech.slashdot.org/story/26/08/30/1850233/google-maps-renamed-lake-ontario-to-lake-america---but-only-for-us-users
[3] https://x.com/MapQuest/status/2093038963196117303
[4] https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2026/08/honoring-the-american-history-of-the-great-lakes-and-renaming-lake-ontario-as-lake-america-3a36/
[5] https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20260831810778/en/MapQuest-Surges-to-No.-1-in-the-Apple-App-Store-30-Years-After-Inventing-Online-Mapping
Re: (Score:1)
Wait, your name is Captain America?
Pleased to meet you!
Re:Good grief (Score:5, Insightful)
Sounds like Trump should be worried about bigger things.
Instead he's making these non-issues his top priority.
Get this loser out. The fact that he's still there is a mark of shame on the country that allows him to continue as their leader.
Re:Good grief (Score:5, Insightful)
> Sounds like Trump should be worried about bigger things.
> Instead he's making these non-issues his top priority.
He's trying to distract us from other things. Like the Iran war, high prices, his family's continued enrichment while he's in office, the Epstein files, and so on.
Re: Good grief (Score:5, Insightful)
He's worried that people who support him might notice how he's fucking up, so he's employing a distraction. He's not very smart so this is the best he can do, but his followers are even less so, so this works.
Re: Good grief (Score:4, Insightful)
This morning I heard an interview with Rahm Emanuel, talking about his time as White House chief of staff in the Obama administration. He said that their focus was on confronting each problem, solving it, and then going on to the next one. Whereas the current administration seems to be focused on creating problems more than solving them.
IMHO it's because they want many of these new self-inflicted "problems" to serve as distractions.
Re:Good grief (Score:4, Insightful)
First world problems here. If you care what a body of water is named on your mapping app then you need more things to keep you busy.
Maybe, but rename it to Lake of Mexico and watch the ensuing outrage.
Re: Good grief (Score:1, Troll)
Thanks for the tip. I am normally unable to address more than one problem at a time. Which is why Trump's strategy to distract me from the pedophilia scandal and Iran war is so incredibility effective against my simple mind.
Re: (Score:1, Troll)
Are you fucking stupid? Names actually are useful, which is why we propers nouns at all.
Jesus fuck the supporters of Trump really are a pack of morally compromised halfwits.
how about (Score:1)
el Bunko Boondoggle #2013.
Rename Trump (Score:3, Funny)
Why don't the Canadians unilaterally decide to rename Trump to something more appropriate and insist on everyone using it?
Re:Rename Trump (Score:5, Funny)
"United States of America" has been a confusing and unwieldy name for a country for a while now.
I suggest we just call it "Trumpistan".
Re: (Score:1, Troll)
i like it, i will unilaterally rename it to Trumpistan
I can also do a big and bad signature too!!
"Magakstan", "Shitholia" (Score:3, Funny)
> "United States of America" has been a confusing and unwieldy name for a country for a while now.
"Magakstan" has been floated around.
Personally prefer "United Shitholes of America" - can keep the "U.S.A." abbreviation. Short form is now "Shitholia", with its citizens now known as "Shitholians".
Re: (Score:1)
> Short form is now "Shitholia", with its citizens now known as "Shitholians".
So would that be pronounced "Shit-holia[n]", or "Shy-tho-lia[n]"?
Re: (Score:2)
My preference is Eustatia.
I think I first proposed this around 1990, perhaps a little bit later.
Re: (Score:2)
> Why don't the Canadians unilaterally decide to rename Trump to something more appropriate and insist on everyone using it?
We routinely call him more appropriate things, but there is a huge variety to choose from and it's hard to settle on just one. I don't think it is Canada's place to pick one anyway, he is so globally reviled in so many different languages. There should be some sort of international agreement on a the best derogatory label for the little man.
Re:Rename Trump (Score:5, Informative)
I don't think we need just one. Variety is wonderful. Mango Mussolini, Cheeto Benito, Agent Orange, Adolf Twitler, TACO. Even better, you can use a bunch of them to avoid repeating.
Re: (Score:3)
Supposedly Google's policies are to follow whatever names the locale the user is in uses. In some cases, this is legitimate, as there are several disputed territories around the world and Google isn't a position to pick and choose. On the other, clearly ridiculous situations such as where a President writes an EO, which merely orders his government to do something, and doesn't impact the rest of the country, are an absurd extreme of this.
But, if that's what they want, I'd totally understand if the Canadian
Re: (Score:2)
This is really the problem:
> I'd totally understand if the Canadian government declares all Trump properties in the US having the name "Pedophile Palace"
Attitudes tolerating immature and inappropriate behaviour from world leaders.
No. I wouldn't understand if my gov't did that. I would be vocal against it.
And no one else should either.
And this stupidity will persist so long as it's tolerated and described in terms that normalize it. Fuck this shit, it's so tiring.
Re: "The Beating of a Liberal" (Score:5, Insightful)
You'd get more viewers throwing in a Republican.
Re: "The Beating of a Liberal" (Score:4, Funny)
Throw both multiple Trumpistan politics in to a arena, with a bribe in the center, only the last surviving politics will be able to clain it!!
Plot twist, when grabbing the bribe, a trapdoor opens and he enters a new arena, with a new set of politics
call it "Obese Games", because they always want more!
Re:"The Beating of a Liberal" (Score:4, Insightful)
The only thing getting beaten here, is a dead horse.
Take your 2015 trolling with you on the way out, it wasn't funny then, it still isn't.
Silly (Score:3, Insightful)
I use a product based on how well it works.
If MapQuest outperformed Google Maps, I would absolutely use it.
I do not let petty politics determine how I think or what products I use on a daily basis.
Re:Silly (Score:5, Informative)
> I use a product based on how well it works.
Google Maps displays incorrect names for geographical locations.
Re: (Score:2)
Touché! :D
Re: (Score:3)
Sorry, but who, officially, has the right to name the lake? I'm pretty sure it isn't the president.
Re: Silly (Score:1)
Apparently, the President does.
[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Board_on_Geographic_Names
Re: (Score:2)
IANAL, but how does it work that way since it's not in the interior of the country? The Wikipedia article you linked mentions "The United States Board on Geographic Names (BGN) is a federal body operating under the United States secretary of the interior."
Note the lower case on "secretary of the interior" is the articles formatting, not my own. The lake in question has a border between two nations, so wouldn't this lake be on the exterior of each country? :-)
Re: (Score:2)
It's an international body of water. In spite of that Wiki entry, the president does not have unilateral power to change it. The only people that believe he does are the mental toddlers that lick his balls between every step.
Re: (Score:2, Troll)
Things aren't instantly renamed when the king scribbles a decree.
Re: Silly (Score:2)
Different strokes
Installed, and disabled Google Maps (Score:5, Interesting)
And then you still have to force it to stop after disabling it, because disable doesn't mean disable to Google. If they don't actually quit the app, how will they continue to steal your location data?
Oh yeah, from play services.
We've gotten to the point where phone makers shouldn't be allowed to bundle any apps with the phone. Gross.
Re: (Score:1)
> We've gotten to the point where phone makers shouldn't be allowed to bundle any apps with the phone. Gross.
On Android the on screen keyboard, phone, contacts, camera, text messaging are all "apps". The phone would be completely unusable to mortals without a half dozen bundled apps. Disable play services and then replace every app that barks at you to get a better idea how absurd the whole thing is.
Google Maps audio was ruined in March 2026 (Score:3, Interesting)
Because Google changed the phrasing of the American English narrated directions by making the speaker sound like an dumb blonde airhead. She says: "You'll take YOUR next right" instead of "Take the next right" "At the next intersection, you'll turn left" instead of "At the next intersection, turn left." The phrasing is like a mom talking patronizingly to her 5 year old child. I blame the horrible changes on DEI and putting a woman who never read more than 50 books in her life in charge of the phrasing. There is a solution to this problem: Configure the Maps app to navigate using British English rather than American English!
Re: (Score:2)
You haven't had to give instructions to people, have you? I once wrote an installation document for a group of service people that I thought were reasonably intelligent; they were all highly-trained senior professionals who worked for a Fortune 100 company. So I took many liberties with the instruction document, assuming that they did not need to be told every. last. step. I then observed them while they deployed the product with my instructions. It was a freaking disaster. I went back and rewrote my inst
Rename Mar-a-lago (Score:5, Funny)
to "Epstein Resort"
OSM FTW (Score:3)
OSM still has the correct label. One can always use CoMaps or something rather than installing MapQuest malware.
Why is this even allowed? (Score:2)
Renaming bodies of water, mountains,.. really anything geographic, should require Congressional approval and not be something that a President can do on a whim because they're throwing a tantrum.
At the very least, Executive Orders of this nature should have a minimum time period before becoming active, like maybe 6 months to a year. That way Congress and the Courts can get involved if necessary before mapping companies, and other companies, expend resources ($$) to comply.
Re: (Score:2)
> Renaming bodies of water, mountains,.. really anything geographic, should require Congressional approval and not be something that a President can do on a whim because they're throwing a tantrum.
> At the very least, Executive Orders of this nature should have a minimum time period before becoming active, like maybe 6 months to a year. That way Congress and the Courts can get involved if necessary before mapping companies, and other companies, expend resources ($$) to comply.
Good idea, then we can undo some of the politically correct renaming of Obama and Biden, and get back to the names that God and outdoorsmen like Teddy Roosevelt intended. :-)
Re: (Score:1)
Ahh... you mean the mountain in Alaska that was named Mt. McKinley in 1917... well after Teddy Roosevelt was President?
Or do you mean the politically correct renaming of geographic features that were given derogatory names of Native Americans? Does God rejoice in using derogatory names? I wasn't aware of that.
Or do you mean the politically correct renaming of military bases? That were named after traitors to the USA? Why would any American want to honor traitors to the USA?
Re: (Score:3)
> Renaming bodies of water, mountains,.. really anything geographic, should require Congressional approval and not be something that a President can do on a whim because they're throwing a tantrum.
I think a better question is why should anyone even care? Geography and language belong to everyone. Who gives a shit what the president thinks?
Hopefully corporations like Google electing to completely abdicate their responsibility as map makers will serve as a catalyst for people to switch to other sources.
Re: (Score:2)
Yeah, I think that makes sense. I'm not sure why it isn't the case. Not sure the Constitution says anything about who gets to name what.
Goodbye, Google Maps--it's been nice but I'm done (Score:2)
Well that's it, I just deleted Google Maps from my phone and installed MapQuest. Google Maps has been getting increasingly annoying over the years--I really hate how it calls out various fast-food restaurants now as I drive by or turn at corners where they're at. It says the name of the stupid chain restaurant instead of street names, wonder how much they're getting paid to do that! It's really irritating, so I'm happy to pull the plug on Google Maps if they're just going to roll over to President Imbecile
Re: (Score:2)
Does that mean you have an iPhone? I'm using Android and afaik it is not possible to delete Google Maps there (not that I actually use it on my phone).
Distraction (Score:4, Insightful)
Renaming a lake and bullying Canada are distractions from the real issues he cares about: the war with Iran, and the Epstein files. Looks like it's working.
Temporary fame (Score:4, Informative)
Their political decision gets the attention, but it doesn't change the fact that their product quality sucks. After the hyper dies down, it goes back to what people need. We can't even change miles to km, no street views, low accuracy. They've done little to improve their service really.
Re: (Score:2)
Sure you can change miles to km, it's in settings under "Units of Measure"
No option for fathoms or leagues, though. I'd actually prefer to use rods. It just makes sense to me that 1 mile should be 320 rods.
Virtue Signaling Points Awarded! (Score:1)
Apparently, choosing a navigation app is now an act of political courage. Never mind accuracy, traffic data, routing, or whether you’ll actually still be using it next month. The important thing is that everyone knows you downloaded the morally correct map.
+100 point awarded. You must feels so much gooder now!
So stunning and brave!
Apple avoids the bad PR yet again (Score:2)
I see so many comments here and elsewhere upset at Google. Apple will let them take the heat and them make exactly the same change in a day or two on their own maps. Same as happened with the gulf of america nonsense.
Re: (Score:1)
Our european overlords named Gulf of Mexico and Lake Ontario, 400 years ago. 250 years onwards and as a superpower, it is time for a change.
Re: (Score:3)
> Our european overlords named Gulf of Mexico and Lake Ontario, 400 years ago. 250 years onwards and as a superpower, it is time for a change.
OK, so we change Gulf of Mexico to Gulf of Presidential Popularity and Lake Ontario to Lake TrumpRapedChildren?
I, for one (Score:2)
can't wait until all all words in American English are replaced by the word "America," and all those un-Americans out there in the world will have to figure out how to understand us solely based on inflection and tone.
America America America America America America America America America America America America America America "America," America America America America-America America America America America America America America America America America America America America America America America
Re: (Score:2)
Oh yeah! Well Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo!
They still exist? (Score:1)
I haven't seen a MapQuest map since... August of 2005. I didn't know it still existed.
Idiotic all around (Score:1)
The reactions to this are as idiotic as the renaming is. It is low brow, low intellect, stupidity all around.
Do no good (Score:4, Insightful)
Every day Google finds a new way to disappoint us.
Yeah the MapQuest's App is the best I downloaded (Score:1)
It and I renamed Lake Ontario to Lake Singapore in my MapQuest UI
--
www.fark.com/politics
Re:Do no good (Score:4, Informative)
You can thumb your nose at the renaming a bit by opening Google Maps, searching for 'Lake Ontario' or 'Lake America', then using the "Add a Label" function to label it something like "The Lake Formerly Known as Ontario", optionally with some obscure Unicode glyph as the icon.
Re:Do no good (Score:4, Interesting)
Not me. I decided on zero positive expectations from Google when they dropped "Don't be evil" and I think I was late at that point to do so.