MapQuest, the self-proclaimed “OG of online mapping,” is having an unexpected moment. The navigation service founded in the 1990s is sitting at the top of App Store charts in the U.S. and Canada following the company’s announcement that it won’t change Lake Ontario to “Lake America” on its maps in response to President Donald Trump’s executive order calling for the renaming in federal databases.
“We’re not changing it,” the company posted to social media on Thursday, the same day Trump directed the Interior Department to officially rename Lake Ontario. Trump’s move comes amid the ongoing trade war between the U.S. and Canada, which has led to significant tension between the two countries.
MapQuest launched as a website for maps and driving directions back in 1996, when getting driving directions online still felt revolutionary. Users could input an address, then typically printed out turn-by-turn instructions to take on the road. Today, the name MapQuest is more likely to evoke the early days of the internet, an era before smartphones put services like Google Maps and Apple Maps in everyone’s pocket.
When the legacy mapping service announced that it wouldn’t change Lake Ontario to Lake America, many commenters on social expressed surprise the service still existed. Yet, as of this writing, the MapQuest app is sitting at the No. 3 spot for free apps in the U.S. App Store and the No. 1 slot for navigation apps, just ahead of Google Maps. It’s currently No. 1 for free apps in Canada’s App Store and No. 1 for navigation apps.
Google Maps made the name change over the weekend, citing its policy of sourcing location names from official government sources, in this case the U.S. Geographic Names Information System. On Monday, Interior Secretary Doug Burgum said President Donald Trump reached out to Apple “directly” asking that it too make the change on its map app.
Given today’s charged political climate, it’s unsurprising the public is viewing companies’ responses to the executive order through a political lens. Some said they’d immediately download the MapQuest app because of the company’s stance, while others took the opportunity to snarkily call it misguided and irrelevant.
“Nobody asked you to weigh in on lake names, grandpa,” X user Tony Shannon wrote in the comments of MapQuest’s post. “We all thought you died quietly in 2009 next to Ask Jeeves, AltaVista and that one uncle who still prints MapQuest directions and tapes them to the dashboard.”
MapQuest took a similar approach in 2025 when Trump signed an order renaming the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America, leading to an earlier viral surge.
“What started as a joke about being so old that we didn’t know how to update our maps quickly turned into a viral hit,” Doug Berger, general manager of MapQuest, said in an interview. “Once we saw the rankings start moving, it became clear people were speaking with their downloads. They want a mapping app that uses names they know and are familiar with.”
Doing More Than Downloading?
But is this just a case of users simply downloading the app to make a political statement? MapQuest says they’re actually trying the modernized product, though time will tell if they stick with it.
“Usage is up roughly 50 times since the change, which tells us people aren’t simply making a symbolic statement,” Berger said. “They’re opening the app and trying MapQuest again.
“We’re excited to welcome so many people back,” he added, “and now the focus is on turning that renewed attention into long-term users.”
