Canada<\/a> will continue to see Lake Ontario, and \u2060users in the rest of the world will see both names, following the same approach \u200cApple \u200cused \u200bafter Trump renamed the Gulf of Mexico as the Gulf of America.<\/p>\nThe name changes illustrate how US tech companies are being pulled \u2060into geopolitical disputes as the Trump administration \u200bpressures them to comply with executive orders that \u200ballies and international bodies have rejected.<\/p>\n
But MapQuest, a 30-year-old company that bills itself as \u201cthe OG\u201d (original) of the internet mapping era, appears to have been rewarded for standing firm.<\/p>\n
TechCrunch said the app\u2019s downloads had \u201csoared\u201d in recent days to become the fourth most popular of all apps in the US, excluding games \u2013 and to lead the Apple app store\u2019s navigation chart, with Google at No 2.<\/p>\n
In Canada, meanwhile, MapQuest was the second-most downloaded app overall by Sunday night.<\/p>\n
It comes as polls show Trump\u2019s efforts at renaming the lake found favor with only 14 per cent of Americans, according to a Reuters\/Ipsos poll published on Tuesday. And that survey found only slightly more, 20 per cent, approved of higher tariffs imposed by the Trump administration on Canadian goods, with 57% opposed.<\/p>\n
MapQuest\u2019s general manager, Doug Berger, said in a statement that usage of its app was running at about 50 times its usual rate. As a bit of fun, he said, the company was also offering subscribers the chance to generate their own name for the lake.<\/p>\n
That was courtesy of a tool it first introduced after Trump rebranded the Gulf of Mexico to the \u201cGulf of America\u201d among US federal government agencies in 2025 \u2013 to which Google also acquiesced in the American market.<\/p>\n
Berger said in a statement: \u201cWe 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\u2019re familiar with.<\/p>\n
\u201cHundreds of thousands of people signaled to us this weekend that we got it right, by downloading our app.\u201d<\/p>\n
MapQuest has maintained its defiance, and some might say mockery, of Trump\u2019s Lake Ontario order since an original \u201cWe\u2019re not changing it\u201d post on social media on 27 August.<\/p>\n
The following day, in an all-capital letter post similar in style and language to those favored by the president, it wrote: \u201cOur maps are big and beautiful. People come up to us and say we\u2019ll get them places. And we do!\u201d<\/p>\n
It also responded to a poster who expressed surprise that MapQuest still existed and was not \u201cin the same grave\u201d as RadioShack, the once prominent US technology and electronics company that went through two bankruptcies and shuttered its retail locations a decade ago.<\/p>\n
\u201cUnderstandable but the other OG, @RadioShackUSA, is still here too,\u201d MapQuest replied, noting its continued existence as an e-commerce operation. – Guardian<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A pioneering online mapping app that defied US president Donald Trump by refusing to rename Lake Ontario has…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":668662,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[41],"tags":[4186,311,9,10,995,356,13,14,823,6,11,12,15,16,5,7,8,384,1411,65,66,67],"class_list":["post-668661","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-world","tag-alphabet","tag-apple","tag-breaking-news","tag-breakingnews","tag-canada","tag-donald-trump","tag-featured-news","tag-featurednews","tag-google","tag-headlines","tag-latest-news","tag-latestnews","tag-main-news","tag-mainnews","tag-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topstories","tag-united-states","tag-us-tariffs","tag-world","tag-world-news","tag-worldnews"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/117201309395425352","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/668661","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=668661"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/668661\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/668662"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=668661"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=668661"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=668661"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
![\"Google](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/XM2HEKZZ5FEH5FFBD5DES64SZE.jpg\")
Google Maps now labels Lake Ontario as Lake America for US users <\/p>\n