MapQuest Trolls Trump, Rockets to No. 1
Trump ordered Lake Ontario renamed 'Lake America' amid a US-Canada trade spat, and while Google Maps quietly complied, 30-year-old underdog MapQuest said absolutely not. The result: hundreds of thousands of new downloads, usage up 50x, and a climb to No. 1 in the App Store's Navigation category, plus a cheeky tool letting users rename the lake themselves. Apple Maps, meanwhile, has stayed silent.
Nothing sells an app in 2026 like refusing to bow to a president's map tantrum.
The backstory
MapQuest pulled the same move last year when Trump renamed the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America, while Apple and Google both complied. It seems defiance is becoming MapQuest's whole brand, and a surprisingly effective growth strategy for an app most people forgot still existed.