MapQuest stood up to President Donald Trump, and now its app is reaping the rewards.
The “OG of online mapping,” as the company calls itself, announced on Thursday that it would not change the name of Lake Ontario on its maps to Lake America, despite Trump’s executive order directing the U.S. Department of the Interior to update the lake’s name in the U.S. geographic naming service. As a result, MapQuest’s mobile app downloads soared, sending the iOS app to the No. 4 position on the U.S. App Store’s Top Charts for apps (not including games) as of Monday morning on the U.S. east coast.
MapQuest also reached the No. 8 position overall in the U.S. App Store across both apps and games, and it became the No. 1 Navigation app in the United States.
Google maps does that as well. I was at Grand Teton and heading to my next camp site. 56 miles, 2.5 hours. That seems a bit low on speed. Checked closer, and yep it wanted me to take my van on a pretty rough logging road. I rerouted through Jackson WY.
My experience as well. I use gmaps only for incity navigation if I need it. It will happily reroute you to some bumfuck nowhere to save a millilitre of gasoline.
Google Maps is notoriously bad with cycle routes. It has sent us over sand paths where you can’t cycle at all, when better routes are available. In cities, OSM also gives better routes.
I took a folding bike on a visit to Toronto and used GM in cycling mode. I guess it wasn’t too bad in the downtown area? But then I forgot to set it back to driving mode on the way home and it picked a rather whimsical route for a car. I thought it was just trying to stay off highways to avoid the notorious Toronto rush hour at first, but eventually, it wanted me drive through the woods on a “trail” that was barely discernible as such.
People think I’m crazy for insisting that google maps sucks if you actually understand how to use a map and traffic reports, but it’s true.