Make MapQuest Great Again
By 
It’s obviously not the most important example of resistance to the Trump administration, but in its own way it’s a telling one:
MapQuest has seen a surge in app downloads after the company said it will not rename Lake Ontario to Lake America, following an executive order President Donald Trump issued last week amid an ongoing trade war with Canada.
“We’re not changing it,” the navigation service posted on social media last week, after Trump announced his decision to rename the lake. MapQuest, which claims to be the first internet mapping service, said it has seen a significant increase in downloads since.
As of Tuesday, it was the top free app in both Apple’s U.S. and Canadian App Stores — its highest ranking in its 30-year history. The company said in a press release that it was not renaming the lake because it keeps “historical, familiar names for lakes and gulfs on its maps.”
Google’s excuse for doing Trump’s bidding — that it’s bound to use the GNIS term by its algorithm — is intelligence-insulting. Humans set the algorithm, and humans can override it. If Joe Biden had declared that Mount Rushmore be renamed “Mount Fuckface” by fiat nobody thinks that Google would have changed its maps to reflect this. It’s capitulation, pure and simple. And while there’s a vibe shift allright, it’s not in the direction that bought-high-on-Trump tech executives think:
A majority of Americans disapprove of President Donald Trump’s recent renaming of Lake Ontario as Lake America, part of his escalating feud with Canada.
About 63 percent of respondents said they opposed Trump’s renaming, while 14 percent said they supported the change, according to a poll released Tuesday by Ipsos and Reuters. About 21 percent said they didn’t know about the name change or were not sure of their views.
Among Republicans, 43 percent said they opposed the name change, while 33 percent said they supported it. The poll was conducted over a three-day period after Trump signed an executive order Thursday, making the change “effective immediately.”
Hard to complain about how the public is objecting to your data centers etc. when you keep taking the short side of 63-14 issues because you learned to love the Trump. You helped break it, you bought it.
…Apple goes Vichy:
Apple has changed the label on Lake Ontario to “Lake America,” according to an Axios review of Apple Maps on Tuesday afternoon.
Why it matters: Apple is the second major digital map provider to make the switch. Google did so over the weekend — at least for those in the United States.
Admittedly, I’ve long been boycotting Apple Maps because it sucks, but it will certainly be easy to continue doing so.