MapQuest Reaches No. 1 on U.S. App Store After Rejecting “Lake America” Rename

MapQuest has reached the No. 1 position among all apps and games on the U.S. App Store, after declining to rename Lake Ontario as “Lake America.”

The app rose from No. 128 on August 28 to No. 92 the next day, then reached No. 3 on August 31. It was also No. 1 in the Navigation category that day.

After the August 27 executive order directing the U.S. geographic naming service to adopt the new name, MapQuest said on X that it would not change the lake’s name. Google Maps and Apple Maps later adopted the new name.

Sensor Tower estimates that MapQuest was downloaded about 632,000 times in the U.S. after the order. MapQuest told TechCrunch that it recorded more than 1.5 million installs across the U.S. and Canada combined.

More than half of MapQuest’s year-to-date U.S. downloads, or 56%, occurred between August 27 and September 1. During that period, U.S. downloads rose 123% day over day and increased more than 50 times compared with the same period last year, according to Sensor Tower’s estimates.

MapQuest still uses the original name Gulf of Mexico instead of Gulf of America. The app is owned by System1, which acquired it from Verizon in 2019.