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.
In numbers, the surge is pretty impressive, too. TechCrunch cites data from the market intelligence firm Sensor Tower which shows that MapQuest saw 184,000 global downloads during the week of August 24, which is a more than ten-fold increase week-over-week.
Google Maps announced the decision to comply with president Trump’s executive order to rename Lake Ontario on Saturday, putting up a face of neutrality by saying it simply reflected its policy to adhere to the US’s Geographic Names Information System.
But since renaming entire geographical landscapes on a whim is apparently the norm in this day and age, MapQuest thought it’d empower users to do the same. Shortly after its viral post, it it released a tool that lets you rename Lake Ontario to whatever you want. “Lake Are We Doing This Again?” is the example the app chose to share.
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The post Google Maps Rival Surges In Popularity After It Refuses to Rename Lake Ontario appeared first on Futurism.
