Why MapQuest stuck with Lake Ontario
Calling itself the "OG of online mapping," MapQuest on Thursday said it would keep Lake Ontario on its maps and not adopt the Lake America label. That position explicitly contradicts President Donald Trump's directive instructing the U.S. Department of the Interior to change the lake's name within the U.S. geographic naming service. "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," Doug Berger, general manager of MapQuest, said. The company introduced a lighthearted web feature for renaming Lake Ontario and sharing the creations, echoing an earlier tool it released last year following Trump's decision to retitle the Gulf of Mexico as the Gulf of America.
The traffic and download bump
Following its decision, the 30-year-old company reported "hundreds of thousands" of additional installs and said app usage jumped to 50 times typical levels. Sensor Tower's third-party data backs up the surge: during the week beginning August 24, MapQuest recorded 184,000 global installs and 162,000 U.S. installs, with each figure more than 10x higher than the prior week. In the U.S., daily downloads climbed 128% from August 26 through August 30. The surge had lifted MapQuest's iOS app to No. 4 on the U.S. App Store's Top Charts for non-game apps by Monday morning on the U.S. East Coast, and to No. 8 overall across apps and games. It also became the top Navigation app in the U.S. and, in Canada's App Store, ranked second overall as of Sunday evening.
Rivals and the geopolitical backdrop
Trump's renaming move came after trade talks collapsed, prompting the U.S. to levy a new 50% tariff on $20 billion in Canadian goods, with Canada readying a response. On Saturday, Google Maps said it would follow Trump's decision, saying it matches map labels to official government sources - in the U.S., that means the Geographic Names Information System. Google added that only U.S.-based users will see the new label; in Canada the map will show Lake Ontario, and users elsewhere, beyond the U.S. and Canada, will see both names. Apple Maps and Google Maps both relabeled the Gulf of Mexico as the Gulf of America after a similar order last year. By Monday morning, Apple Maps had not changed the Great Lake's label to Lake America and had not provided an update on its plans.
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Rankings, reach, and history
Sensor Tower estimates MapQuest's app has accumulated 687,000 worldwide installs so far this year, up 29% from a year earlier. Since 2012, the app has racked up 24.4 million downloads, with 97% coming from the United States. MapQuest's ownership has changed hands over the years: AOL purchased it soon after its IPO, it subsequently moved under Verizon when Verizon acquired AOL, and System1 bought it in 2019.
