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When president Donald Trump, in his latest paroxysm, declared that he would be renaming Lake Ontario to “Lake America,” Google instantly capitulated. So eager was it to realize his will that it actually renamed the lake before official government map makers did, Ars Technica noted.
No one really expected a tech monopoly to take a principled stand against the decision, but you might’ve expected it to at least pretend that it was deliberating acting on an order with real diplomatic ramifications.
But that’s not what Google did, and its rivals are now thanking it. MapQuest, the self-styled “OG of online mapping” that your mom probably used to print out before family roadtrips, announced defiantly on social media Thursday that it wouldn’t be changing the name of Lake Ontario. The posts garnered hundreds of thousands of likes on platforms including Instagram and X, and these viral moments seem to be translating into actual success.
As TechCrunch reports, MapQuest’s mobile app has consequently surged in popularity, rising its way to becoming the number one navigation app in all of the US on Apple’s App Store.
It’s become so popular, in fact, that it also climbed to the fourth position on the App Store’s Top Charts, which excludes games, and number eight overall across apps and games.
Canadians approve of MapQuest’s stand, too. Across the northern border, it reached number two overall as of Sunday evening, per TechCrunch. As they say: do nothing, win.
“We’re not changing it,” MapQuest declared in the viral post, with a screenshot of a map showing Lake Ontario.
Clearly relishing the moment, MapQuest made another dig days later.
“We are aware that Lake Ontario is being correctly labeled on our map,” it posted.
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