// 9TO5GOOGLE — MOBILE & WEB
Be the MapQuest you want to see in the world
Google morning. How many times have you written that before? I hope you had a lovely final weekend before Labor Day. This morning, I’m reading about tens of thousands of dollars’ worth of pristine Duck Hunt cartridges found in a box in Wisconsin, vigorously nodding my head along to John Oliver’s takedown of subscription bloat (but remember to subscribe to 9to5Google Pro anyway!), and wishing I had a 3D printer to create my dream storage and organization system.
As a reminder, Inbox is the tech newsletter that goes beyond the news cycle. We cover the most important 9to5Google stories from the last couple of days along with a few highlights from around the web. We publish every Tuesday and Thursday, and if you like what you read, please subscribe.
Inbox is written by Daniel Bader. Read previous issues here, and then catch up with Ben Schoon’s excellent Weekender column published every Sunday.
I think it’s safe to say that Google’s decision over the weekend to change the name of Lake Ontario to Lake America has been met with a bit of pushback.
In a blog post, Google says that it generally abides by the Geographic Names Information System when it comes to how it presents names on maps, and since Executive Order 14420 “directs the Board on Geographic Names (‘BGN’) to immediately rename Lake Ontario to Lake America and to update the Geographic Names Information System to appropriately reflect the change,” it was merely following its own protocols. Google went through the same rigmarole when it renamed Gulf of Mexico to Gulf of America in February 2025.
One beneficiary of the drama has been MapQuest, the company whose rise and subsequent fall can be directly traced to Google Maps’ ascent over the past two decades. In social media posts on Friday, the company showed a cropped map of Lake Ontario with the caption, “We’re not changing it,” inspiring widespread support alongside understandable questions of “MapQuest still exists?!”
Over the weekend, the company’s Android and iOS downloads shot up 128%, bringing it to the top of their respective “maps & navigation apps” categories on both platforms, and app usage was up 50x, according to owner System1.
As of writing, Apple has yet to make the same change to its Maps app, but it’ll likely happen any day now, particularly because the President is applying pressure, according to reports.
Though the name change itself amounts to a minor scuffle within the larger trade war between the US and Canada, Google Maps’ enormous reach — and companies’ reliance on its APIs — means that long after the heat has died down, its effects will be felt indefinitely.
Welcome to a new project I’m calling Cc, where I ask interesting people in the community about what’s making them happy both inside and outside the world of tech. First up, my friend and long-time mobile journalist, David Imel.