MapQuest Downloads Soar After Company’s Refusal To Rename Lake Ontario

Senior Contributor.

Summary

Navigation service MapQuest, founded 30 years ago, is topping App Store charts in the United States and Canada after the company said it won't rename Lake Ontario to "Lake America" in response to President Trump's executive order issued as a tactic in the U.S.-Canada trade war. The company saw more than 100,000 downloads on Sunday alone, its best day in a decade. The company reports a 50-fold increase in app usage, suggesting users are genuinely re-engaging with the platform beyond a political statement.

MapQuest, the self-proclaimed “OG of online mapping,” is having an unexpected moment after the company’s announcement that it won’t change Lake Ontario to Lake America on its maps in response to President Trump’s executive order calling for the Great Lake to be renamed in federal databases.

The app for the navigation service founded in the 1990s is sitting atop download charts in the U.S. and Canada.

“We’re not changing it,” the company posted to social media on Thursday, the same day Trump directed the Department of the Interior to officially rename Lake Ontario . Trump’s move comes amid the ongoing trade war between the U.S. and Canada, which has led to significant tension between the two countries.

MapQuest launched as a website for maps and driving directions back in 1996, when getting driving directions online still felt revolutionary. Users could input an address, then typically printed out turn-by-turn instructions to take on the road. Today, the name MapQuest is likely to evoke the early days of the internet, an era before smartphones put services like Google Maps and Apple Maps in pockets and on dashboards.

MapQuest Downloads, By The Numbers

On Sunday, MapQuest’s app saw 80,000 iOS downloads, compared with a daily average of 500 in early August, according to market intelligence provider Appfigures. Downloads on Google Play rose to 20,000 on Saturday from a daily average of about 1,000.

Appfigures’ app intelligence for Apple’s App Store is delayed for a day and for two days for Google Play. “Apple was at 21,ooo on Saturday, so I suspect the increase is similar across the two stores and that Sunday was explosive on Google Play as well, which we’ll see tomorrow,” Appfigures co-founder and CEO Ariel Michaeli said during an online chat.

Michaeli estimated that MapQuest crossed 100,000 downloads overall on Sunday in the U.S. and Canada combined, marking its best day in a decade.

MapQuest took a similar approach in 2025 when Trump signed an order renaming the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America, leading to an earlier viral surge.

“What started as a joke about being so old that we didn’t know how to update our maps quickly turned into a viral hit,” Doug Berger, general manager of MapQuest, said in an interview. “Once we saw the rankings start moving, it became clear people were speaking with their downloads. They want a mapping app that uses names they know and are familiar with.”

Doing More Than Downloading?

But is this just a case of users simply downloading the app to make a political statement? MapQuest says they’re actually trying the modernized product, though time will tell if they stick with it.

“Usage is up roughly 50 times since the change, which tells us people aren’t simply making a symbolic statement,” Berger said. “They’re opening the app and trying MapQuest again."

“We’re excited to welcome so many people back,” he added, “and now the focus is on turning that renewed attention into long-term users.”