MapQuest Tops App Store Charts After Refusing 'Lake America' Change

MapQuest has captured the attention this week after declining to alter Lake Ontario to Lake America in its maps following an executive order from U.S. President Donald Trump. As of Monday, the MapQuest app is the most downloaded free iPhone application in Canada and holds the fourth position on the U.S. equivalent chart. For those familiar with the company, MapQuest was once a favored service during road trips when printing directions on paper was common, before the rise of smartphones and apps like Google Maps and Apple Maps.

While MapQuest still offers iOS and Android apps, the company is no longer as popular as it once was. However, that has changed recently. The company announced that hundreds of thousands of people downloaded its apps since Thursday, and it reported a roughly 50× surge in map usage as of August 30. Apple Maps now displays the Lake America name in the United States, but MapQuest maintains its original name.

Doug Berger, MapQuest's general manager, stated in a press release that the company chose to keep the original name because hundreds of thousands of people expressed their preference by downloading the app. Although Google Maps has updated to show the Lake America name for U.S. users, MapQuest is not changing its name.