MapQuest Gains 1 Million Downloads After Defying Trump's Lake Ontario Renaming

3 articles · Updated · New York Magazine · Sep 2

Around 1 million people downloaded MapQuest in six days after it said it would keep Lake Ontario’s historic name instead of adopting Trump’s proposed “Lake America.”
Doug Berger said the surge began last Thursday after Trump floated the renaming, with users flocking to MapQuest as Google and Apple were seen as yielding on geographic labels.
MapQuest, owned by System1 and staffed by about 50 employees, says private companies are not required to make such name changes and has kept the name used since at least 1639.
The spike is unusually large for a once-dominant navigation brand that logged about 40 million users in the previous month, giving it a rare chance to regain mainstream visibility.
The dispute follows Trump’s earlier Gulf of Mexico renaming push and has drawn sharper backlash because Lake Ontario sits at the center of a worsening U.S.-Canada clash.