They'll get their 15 minutes, but there's no _there_ there. They're owned by System1, a bottom-of-the-barrel advertising company where 1990s web brands go to die (Metacrawler? Startpage.com?? Dogpile?!?!). Their maps are OpenStreetMaps maps.
People think they have their back (because OSM is showing Lake Ontario), but it's just marketing.
The same people throwing a tantrum about the inconsequential naming of a lake are now throwing a shit-fit after they discovered their newly beloved MapQuest doesn't show their preferred borders for Palestine, so I'm quite enjoying this play out.
I don’t understand why the phrasing of the order matters. It’s very obviously a petulant and childish move made in response to trade negotiation failures with Canada. That’s literally what Trump himself has said:
> The United States is giving serious consideration to changing the name of Lake Ontario to Lake America in that we don’t expect to be doing much business with Ontario any longer. Thank you for your attention to this matter!
Problem with the "childish" take is it waves off the admins statements they intentionally engage in this shit to rile up the terminally online lizard brains
First, I suspect that if they buy a laminated map for children, it still has the old name, since there hasn't been time to print new ones and work them all the way through the supply chain.
Second, I don't think anyone is losing sleep at night over this, except for maybe Trump.
But third, yes, some of us do like, in our own small and quiet ways, not to cooperate with pettiness, arbitrary authority, and executive overreach.
I've dumped Google Maps for OSM over three years ago and have not looked back. Did this as one of my de-Google steps by choosing a Fairphone.
Looking at a FuriLabs FLX1S to start the next phase by switching to a Linux phone.
I've become a sunk cost to Google by not spending anything on their products or services and always use Ad-Block solution in a private session if I must.
I enjoy how Bing Maps (and Bing in general) are so unloved that it's not even part of the debate. (Bing Maps hasn't changed - yet - but probably will eventually, since they caved on the Gulf of Mexico)
As long as tech companies make a stand against superficial culture war fights like this nobody will care that they've caved w.r.t privacy over the last two decades. Sad!
Finding MapQuest on the PlayStore was a quest all on its own. More specifically, it does not exist on my PlayStore, and I had to install it on my phone remotely through the browser PlayStore.
Review wise, it sits firmly at a single star, so it's possible that Google burried it, although I would not put it past them to rig things.
I tried it out for a trip yesterday. I wanted to love the app—it has a great retro feel, and an ad-free subscription option—but it gave me weird routes and the audio was extremely stuttery.
I get why people want Apple and Google to push back but ultimately there isn’t any logical approach for them to operate that isn’t “name things as the relevant governmental bodies name them”. Otherwise what source of truth is there?
The responsibility here is with a spineless government. An executive order is not a law and a congress that did its job would quickly contract these kind of mad king declarations.
What about researchers at universities? Maintain a list of experts and conduct a poll whenever an event like this happens or enough of the experts request.
Or require an act of Congress. Obviously, we can no longer rely on Executive Orders being careful, thought-out, or lasting changes. Does any mapping organization want to change names back and forth? Does any user want to see these changes?
Right but who maintains that list of experts? Google? Aren’t we just giving the tech giants more power in that scenario? Yes, in this specific instance it’s an outcome we want. But in the long term we’re replacing democratic government with corporate control. Which doesn’t seem good.
The government has no right to name geographic features. The names are established by popular usage, not the feds. As such Google and Apple should not listen to the demands of a body which has no right to make them in the first place.
“Popular usage” is all very well and good until you have to quantify it in some way. No way it wouldn’t be a complete mess.
For example: the body of water between the UK and France. The UK calls it “the English Channel”. The French call it “la Manche”. It has no official international name. In Google Maps both names are used depending on what country/language you are using. Choosing one via popular usage would not be a good solution.
People think they have their back (because OSM is showing Lake Ontario), but it's just marketing.
The concept of searching a bunch of search engines made sense to me.
It made sense to somebody else[0], too.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DuckDuckGo
I thought that was still the best way to get anonymous google index search results?
never mind looks like they got swallowed up by bing maps (that’s where Bing got line drive from, TIL!)
https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2026/08/hono...
It's part of the "flood the field with bullshit" scheme of Steve Bannon
> The United States is giving serious consideration to changing the name of Lake Ontario to Lake America in that we don’t expect to be doing much business with Ontario any longer. Thank you for your attention to this matter!
https://truthsocial.com/@realDonaldTrump/posts/1171557898746...
This is intentional manipulation
Second, I don't think anyone is losing sleep at night over this, except for maybe Trump.
But third, yes, some of us do like, in our own small and quiet ways, not to cooperate with pettiness, arbitrary authority, and executive overreach.
Looking at a FuriLabs FLX1S to start the next phase by switching to a Linux phone.
I've become a sunk cost to Google by not spending anything on their products or services and always use Ad-Block solution in a private session if I must.
I wonder if Bing is worth it for them to still operate because of the people paying to use the index.
It's ad companies all the way down.
Review wise, it sits firmly at a single star, so it's possible that Google burried it, although I would not put it past them to rig things.
The responsibility here is with a spineless government. An executive order is not a law and a congress that did its job would quickly contract these kind of mad king declarations.
Or require an act of Congress. Obviously, we can no longer rely on Executive Orders being careful, thought-out, or lasting changes. Does any mapping organization want to change names back and forth? Does any user want to see these changes?
For example: the body of water between the UK and France. The UK calls it “the English Channel”. The French call it “la Manche”. It has no official international name. In Google Maps both names are used depending on what country/language you are using. Choosing one via popular usage would not be a good solution.
Huh? Isn't that exactly what you've described? In the UK they show the popular usage in the UK, and the same in France.
[0] - https://boingboing.net/2019/10/10/do-webrings-next.html