MapQuest tops US app downloads after refusing to rename Lake Ontario as 'Lake America'

A pioneering online mapping app that defied Donald Trump by refusing to rename Lake Ontario has become the most in-demand navigation tool in the US.

MapQuest, which was openly dismissive of the president’s 27 August executive order directing federal agencies to refer to the smallest of the Great Lakes as “Lake America” amid a trade spat with Canada, leapfrogged rivals Google Maps and Apple Maps to top the most-downloaded list, as first reported by TechCrunch.

The app held the No 1 spot on Apple’s App Store as of Tuesday morning, the Guardian confirmed.

Google quickly capitulated to Trump’s demand, showing Lake America to US customers, while Apple is reportedly mulling a decision under pressure from the White House to make the same change.

But MapQuest, a 30-year-old company that bills itself as “the OG” (original) of the internet mapping era, appears to have been rewarded for standing firm.

TechCrunch said the app’s downloads had “soared” in recent days to become the fourth most popular of all apps in the US, excluding games – and to lead the Apple app store’s navigation chart, with Google at No 2.

In Canada, meanwhile, MapQuest was the second-most downloaded app overall by Sunday night.

It comes as polls show Trump’s efforts at renaming the lake found favor with only 14% of Americans, according to a Reuters/Ipsos poll published on Tuesday. And that survey found only slightly more, 20%, approved of higher tariffs imposed by the Trump administration on Canadian goods, with 57% opposed.

MapQuest’s 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.

That was courtesy of a tool it first introduced after Trump rebranded the Gulf of Mexico to the “Gulf of America” among US federal government agencies in 2025 – to which Google also acquiesced in the American market.

Berger said in a statement: “We 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’re familiar with.

“Hundreds of thousands of people signaled to us this weekend that we got it right, by downloading our app.”

MapQuest has maintained its defiance, and some might say mockery, of Trump’s Lake Ontario order since an original “We’re not changing it” post on social media on 27 August.

The following day, in an all-capital letter post similar in style and language to those favored by the president, it wrote: “Our maps are big and beautiful. People come up to us and say we’ll get them places. And we do!”

It also responded to a poster who expressed surprise that MapQuest still existed and was not “in the same grave” as RadioShack, the once prominent US technology and electronics company that went through two bankruptcies and shuttered its retail locations a decade ago.

“Understandable but the other OG, @RadioShackUSA, is still here too,” MapQuest replied, noting its continued existence as an e-commerce operation.

On Tuesday morning, Apple Maps continued to show the body of water spanning the US-Canada border as Lake Ontario, despite the insistence on Monday of Doug Burgum, Trump’s interior secretary, that he was “confident” it would soon show Lake America after the president contacted the company directly.

On Google, its map for US users reflects the change – but remains Lake Ontario, a name it has had for about 400 years, for users in the rest of the world.

Elsewhere, protests continue to escalate. A giant “Lake Ontario – Now and Always” sign in English and French was erected over the weekend near Grimsby, Ontario. Ontario’s premier, Doug Ford, told ABC News: “No one’s going to call it Lake of America. It’s been Lake Ontario for hundreds of years. It’s going to continue being Lake Ontario.”