MapQuest app surges to No. 1 in Navigation after refusing to rename Lake Ontario | Hacker News Reader

MapQuest app surges to No. 1 in Navigation after refusing to rename Lake Ontario

techcrunch.com

48 pointsspeckx12 comments

Good on you MapQuest!!!

Yesterday, I learned that the threat to rename the Gulf of Mexico I heard about long ago, actually happened. A friend told me that it happened, and I looked it up on Google Maps and sure enough, it was renamed. I was in disbelief, and literally had to see if this was a dream, so I tested my dream by trying to fly and couldn't fly and then I realized it was true, and not a dream. Dead serious.

I've been off news feeds for years now (soo much happier) and really am shocked such a stupid thing was done.

Then they told me that this idiot was trying to rename Lake Ontario too. I was like "that will never happen".

Now, today I hear here that the idiot actually did follow through with this threat to rename Lake Ontario. What a sad mental state of affairs for that individual.

Good news I suppose is that since renaming things is being made common by this person then we should have very little resistance in renaming the things that were named after "them" and/or by them when they are gone.

By the time I've finished saving up for a boat, I might get to sail it on Lake Trumpisanonce.

I'm not sure people actually understand why this is just sad.

It is not that I am against a nationalist and populist renaming, it is that these renames have a clearly negative impact.

They deny the identity of the local people who lived there before us (Ontario meaning "sparkling lake" in Iroquoian; Mexico being a Nahuatl expression).

They undermine the diversity and richness of the names we use. Do we really want everything to be "of America"?

That doesn't make America greater; it just makes it dumber, and boring.

The rest of the world really should rename the USofA.

Maybe every month it gets a new name based on a global vote. I bet the names would be great!

Land of the orange.

Home of the rapists.

People and the news doing a great job scapegoating Google instead of the administration that renamed it in the first place.

The administration has no power to force anyone to go along with its stupid attempts to change the name. We can, and should, blame both the administration (for trying to rename things it has no right to rename) and Google (for indulging their whims).

Why shouldn’t they? Google chose this, perhaps out of pressure, but still.

Google: How the GNIS Lake Ontario/Lake America name change in the U.S. will appear in Maps

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49495947

If you react to this you're giving the administration exactly what it wants.

I hate how easy it is for Trump to get people talking about stuff that really doesn't matter and ignoring stuff that actually matters.

I liked Bill Maher's response to it. He should have also mentioned the 650 things that were renamed from 2020 to 2024 for purely political reasons.

Apple is renaming the lake on Apple Maps too. So, 100% of those people who switched to MapQuest are still adding to AppleGoogle's revenue which must be disappointing to them, but if this somehow leads to popular support for a new platform or even more-web-fewer-apps, I'll be super glad for that.

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