It is 2026, and all issues late ’90s and early 2000s are cool once more. Together with, apparently, MapQuest.
The self-proclaimed “OG of online mapping” has shot as much as the fourth-most-downloaded free program on Apple’s App Retailer within the US. It is the most-downloaded Apple app in Canada and the twenty first hottest free app on Google Play Retailer, based on AppFigures.
MapQuest’s renaissance comes after the free on-line mapping service wrote a number of posts saying it’s going to proceed to label the easternmost Nice Lake as “Lake Ontario.” The transfer rejects the Trump Administration’s Thursday government order that “instantly” renamed the physique of water between New York and Ontario “Lake America” within the federal authorities’s official database of place names.
Google Maps changed the lake’s name for American customers on Sunday, whereas Apple Maps has — to this point — stored the Ontario moniker.
That might change, Inside Secretary Doug Burgum told Fox News on Monday. Trump “has reached out to Apple immediately,” he mentioned, including that we might see app updates “coming quickly.”
In 2025, Apple and Google each up to date their map labels, renaming the Gulf of Mexico to “Gulf of America” after an identical government order.
MapQuest, which began in 1996, grew to become fashionable earlier than smartphones grew to become widespread. American households might ask the computer-based service for turn-by-turn instructions to a vacation spot hours away after which print them earlier than hitting the street. AOL scooped up the service in 2000 for $1.1 billion.
It rapidly grew to become out of date as GPS-enabled telephones rose in reputation, giving drivers on-the-spot instructions, even when they took a unsuitable flip. Google Maps surpassed MapQuest in reputation by 2008.
The previous platform instructed Enterprise Insider it initially determined to maintain the Gulf of Mexico’s title “as a joke about being so previous we do not know methods to replace our maps.”
Now, MapQuest says it is seen a 50x surge in utilization — and will not swap both physique of water’s title.
“Folks spoke with their downloads,” Doug Berger, the overall supervisor of MapQuest, mentioned. “They need a mapping app with names they’re conversant in.”
Google Maps, in the meantime, is the nineteenth hottest Apple app in America, 14 slots behind MapQuest.





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