MapQuest is back near the top of Apple’s App Store after the mapping company refused to rename Lake Ontario as “Lake America,” a change directed last week in a federal executive order.
The 1990s directions brand posted Thursday, “We’re not changing it.” MapQuest general manager Doug Berger said the company took the same approach it used when the Gulf of Mexico was relabeled Gulf of America on some U.S. maps: keep the names people already know.
By Monday, MapQuest said hundreds of thousands of people had downloaded its apps since Thursday and that usage was about 50 times normal. MacRumors reported the iOS app as the top free iPhone app in Canada and No. 4 among free U.S. apps, excluding games. TechCrunch said it reached No. 1 in U.S. navigation. Sensor Tower data cited by TechCrunch showed more than 160,000 U.S. downloads in the week starting Aug. 24, more than 10 times the prior week.
MapQuest is back near the top of Apple’s App Store after the mapping company refused to rename Lake Ontario as “Lake America,” a change directed last week in a federal executive order.
Apple App Story
President Donald Trump’s order directed the Interior Department to update the U.S. Geographic Names Information System so the lake that sits between New York and the Canadian province of Ontario would appear as Lake America in federal records. Google Maps changed the label for users in the United States over the weekend, citing its policy of following official government names. Apple Maps still showed Lake Ontario as of Monday. Interior Secretary Doug Burgum said on Fox Business that the administration had contacted Apple.
MapQuest also launched a tool that lets users stamp their own label on the lake. Berger said in a statement that people “signaled to us this weekend that we got it right, by downloading our app.”
The surge is a rare revival for an app many drivers left behind after Google Maps and Apple Maps took over turn-by-turn navigation. Whether the spike lasts past the name fight is another question. For now, MapQuest is getting the kind of traffic it has not seen in years by leaving one of the Great Lakes alone.
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