Google updated its Maps application on Sunday in adherence with an executive order President Donald Trump signed on Thursday that renamed Lake Ontario to Lake America. Titled, “Honoring the American history of the Great Lakes and renaming…
Page A14From§Eachthe early bird edition — 2 September 2026
MapQuest refuses Trump's Lake America order and beats Google, Apple to No. 1 in the App Store
As it ran on the front
On August 27th the President stood beside a lake he had just renamed by decree, "effective immediately," because trade talks with Canada had soured and the water needed to reflect his mood. Not a bill, not a vote — an executive order retitling a physical feature of North America "Lake America," with the Interior Secretary told to "take all appropriate actions," government for make it stick.
Three days later, Google made it stick. On August 30th the company updated its U.S. maps and called the change procedural, pointing to a federal naming database as though the database hadn't just been told what to say.…
…(cont) By September 2nd, Apple caught up, updating its own maps "following competitor Google" — one company's obedience cited as the reason for the next company's obedience, like a line where each machine watches the one before it and copies the motion.
Then the part the market wrote itself. MapQuest — the app most people under forty remember only as the thing that used to print fourteen pages of directions for a drive across town — left the lake alone. On the same day Apple fell in line, MapQuest hit No. 1 in the entire App Store, ahead of both companies that did as they were told.
Sit with that. Two of the most valuable corporations on earth read the room and complied inside seventy-two hours, and the app that said no is the one people downloaded. Compliance didn't buy anything here. It just proved compliance was for sale, and that the buyer wasn't the public.
The President didn't stop to enjoy it. That same week he floated the next name out loud, in writing: the Strait of Hormuz — a waterway this country has never owned and does not control — rebranded "TRUMP STRAIT," because, in his words, it would be "hotter than ever."
A lake gets renamed because two companies said yes fast enough. A strait on the other side of the planet is next because nothing stopped him at the lake. This isn't about geography. It's a loyalty test run in public, with a leaderboard, and today the only outfit outperforming the two biggest tech companies alive is the one still handing out paper maps.
“This ain't about a lake, it's a loyalty test with a scoreboard — two trillion-dollar companies folded in three days flat, and the one that said no is the one people are actually downloading. He's already got the next name picked out, a strait he doesn't even own, because nobody upstairs told him to stop at the lake. Compliance is for sale, and the rest of us are the ones who end up paying the price on it.”
“Look, this is about American pride — the President renamed a lake, and two great American companies stood with him instead of making it political. MapQuest also stood with him, technically, by ignoring the order completely, and that somehow won too, but that's an App Store thing, that's separate. And the strait — sure, we don't technically own the strait, but "Trump Strait" has a ring to it, doesn't it? Did I just defend renaming a waterway we don't control? That's not — forget I said that.”
The receipts
Apple has relabeled Lake Ontario to “Lake America” for U.S. users of its maps app, following competitor Google days after President Donald Trump ordered a new name for the body of water amid his escalating trade war with Canada
MapQuest, the mapping service long associated with stacks of printed driving directions, has found its way back to the top of the technology world after it refused to change Lake Ontario’s name in its app after President Donald Trump renamed the body of water. The MapQuest app surged to the No. 1 spot in Apple’s […]
Tech giant Google faced widespread criticism over the weekend for becoming the first major online map provider to change the name of "Lake Ontario" to "Lake America" for its US users, after President Donald Trump ordered the name change in an executive order on Thursday. Google presented the decision as a procedural one in its statement…
President Trump on Wednesday floated changing the name of the Strait of Hormuz to the Trump Strait, despite the waterway not having a single owner. “Now that we have it under U.S.A. control, should we change the name Hormuz Strait to TRUMP STRAIT???
Apple is the latest big tech company to go along with President Trump's order to change the name of Lake Ontario to Lake America.
President Trump signed an executive order Thursday formally changing the name of Lake Ontario to "Lake America" amid the U.S. trade war with Canada. “We’re going to be changing the name of Lake Ontario effective immediately to Lake…
President Donald Trump signed an executive order renaming Lake Ontario to Lake America as a slight after trade negotiations with Canada broke down. The move was predictably polarizing, energizing Trump’s allies while being denounced by his…
This page is a back-issue: the story as it ran, receipts as they were. The current edition is at the front.