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thehill.comMapQuest tops Apple, Google Maps in downloads after refusing Trump’s ‘Lake America’ changeMapQuest has surged in popularity on the app charts after the mapping service said it would not rename Lake Ontario to “Lake America” after President Trump signed an executive order cha…

showing the absolute faintest backbone possible as a market brand differentiator

arstechnica.comGoogle Maps renames "Lake Ontario" to "Lake America" even faster than US governmentGoogle rolled out the Lake America change on Saturday, while the official US government maps are still waiting.

we have absolutely no ethical center or backbone whatsoever, how high can we jump for you, sir

tech companies tried to pretend they were just adhering to automated GNIS data standards, but that appears to be incorrect they were just pre-emptively feckless because U.S. tech leadership has absolutely zero ethical or moral center of any kind

2/9/26, 1:50 pm39 reposts127 likes

bskwitter.bsky.social

@bskwitter.bsky.social

Au contraire! Their ethical and moral center is "shareholder value."

Kevin Retzke

@kmr.me

usgs.govDownload GNIS DataLearn about and download U.S. Board on Geographic Names data from the Geographic Names Information System (GNIS)

The "base map" is what you see when you explore the map on the website. Nobody doing bulk data import is looking at that. I don't know what exactly they use, but it's more likely these files, so the question is when were they updated? www.usgs.gov/us-board-on-...

Kevin Retzke

@kmr.me

@bluestatedon.bsky.social

"Lake America" is in "DomesticNames_National.txt" and says it was updated on 08/27/2026. I don't like the name change but let's focus on who is actually making the changes not the technical apparatus that falls downstream of that. Especially without understanding the technical details…

bluestatedon.bsky.social

Google is a massively powerful corporation that has been at the forefront of the development of web-based information systems for almost 3 decades. The notion that it doesn’t have the technical expertise to disregard US GNIS mapping protocol is preposterous.

correct

cavu4ever.bsky.social

@cavu4ever.bsky.social

Indeed. The same company that said “we can’t isolate nations on the internet” when the EU was threatening antitrust. Utter bollocks.

Paul

@paulaheim.bsky.social