MapQuest Surges in Usage as Google Bends the Knee to Trump on ‘Lake America’

When it comes to navigation, MapQuest is back on the map. The mapping company from way back when (that is still around, as it turns out) had a massive surge in downloads after it announced that it wouldn’t change the name of Lake Ontario to “Lake America” following an executive order signed by Donald Trump .

TechCrunch first noticed that MapQuest jumped to the top of the Navigation apps charts in the Apple App Store, bypassing competitors like Google Maps and Waze, which weren’t even a twinkle in a developer’s eye at the time MapQuest was the apex predator of navigation. But it’s not just the niche category where MapQuest is surging: it reached fourth overall on Apple’s Top Charts for apps in the United States and second overall in Canada.

All this because MapQuest has done…well, nothing. By simply not changing the name of Lake Ontario to appease the President, the old-school mapper has differentiated itself in a way the richest and most powerful tech companies in the world haven’t.

Google announced over the weekend that it would comply. In a statement, the company said that, because the U.S. Geographic Names Information System (GNIS) has formally changed the name for Lake Ontario to “Lake America,” it’ll show up that way in Google Maps for Americans. “Since we update Google Maps to reflect name changes in official government sources, which is GNIS for the U.S., people using Maps in the U.S. will see ‘Lake America,’ those in Canada will continue to see ‘Lake Ontario,’ and those outside of the U.S. and Canada will see both names,” the company said.

Burgum says Trump "reached out to Apple directly" about changing Lake Ontario to Lake America and adds, "I'm sure we may be seeing that change coming up soon"

Apple hasn’t made an official announcement on how it’ll handle the change, but the Trump administration sure seems to believe the Cupertino giant will give in. Reuters reported that Interior Secretary Doug Burgum said Trump has spoken to Apple about the situation and, “we may be seeing that change ​coming up soon to Lake America.” Apple did not respond when asked about its plans for labeling the lake in Apple Maps. The company did previously acquiesce to another Trump tantrum and changed the name of the Gulf of Mexico to “Gulf of America” in Maps.

MapQuest, meanwhile, has stayed strong. The company also resisted the Gulf of Mexico fiasco, opting not to make the change despite GNIS officially updating the name to Gulf of America. Instead, the company released a Gulf Name Generator that allowed users to make up their own gulf name.

Welcome to 2026, where we are making choices on which products to use on the basis of whether or not the makers comply with the whims of an administration operating seemingly entirely on spite and rage bait.