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.
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.
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
Yea like naming Army street to Chavez and all the other hundreds of renamings of American place names over the last couple of decades… like we should be up in arms by now we just can’t contend with so much overwhelming change!
Or reaming stadiums for sponsorships, renaming towns for sponsorships… we have a never ending stream of renamings to be mad at and wave our ineffectual fists at.
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 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)
It’s not like Microsoft has artisanal cartographers sitting around deciding what to call every geographic feature. Bing Maps ingests its base map data from providers, which in turn aggregate a bunch of authoritative, commercial, open, and government datasets.
And for things like official geographic names, government naming databases are often one of the authoritative upstream sources. So if the U.S. government changes the name in its official geographic database, it’s not surprising for that change to eventually propagate through map providers and into Bing.
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 would give us 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.
> No, they show what the respective government datasets contain
Which matches popular usage in the respective countries. Your example is a non sequitir for explaining why matching popular usage can't possibly work.
For the popular usage of major geographical features to change is extremely rare, so I am skeptical that it's a huge amount of work to keep up with changes in popular usage.
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.
as opposed to a top of the barrel advertising company like Google
There is significant differences in advertising. The things at the bottom of the barrel in advertising are often literally malware.
You mean like software that restricts what your devices can do and collects and sells your personal information? Its the very same barrel.
Nah, it's all malware. Some just for your brain.
Dogpile?!? There's a name I haven't heard in what feels like 20 years.
The concept of searching a bunch of search engines made sense to me.
> 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
Ironicly this is what my agent does today on my behalf because regular search has become so bad
Unfortunately at the other end of that websearch is a bunch of slop, your agent can't save you from it.
>Startpage.com
I thought that was still the best way to get anonymous google index search results?
I also enjoy their privacy focused email startmail.com
They forgot to scoop up mapbalst!
never mind looks like they got swallowed up by bing maps (that’s where Bing got line drive from, TIL!)
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.
What do you use on Android instead of Google Maps, OsmAnd or something else?
It still says Ontario because there's no one left at MapQuest that knows how to change it.
That may be, but it's still what many people want.
I suggest they buy a laminated map for children, cross it out, and write the old name in so they can sleep at night.
Or we could not bend the knee to a single old man throwing a tantrum.
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.
What about the executive order reads as someone throwing a tantrum?
https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2026/08/hono...
That such an order exists is the giveaway
It's part of the "flood the field with bullshit" scheme of Steve Bannon
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!
https://truthsocial.com/@realDonaldTrump/posts/1171557898746...
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
This is intentional manipulation
Weird, one could say that about the person who insisted on this useless change in the first place...
Yea like naming Army street to Chavez and all the other hundreds of renamings of American place names over the last couple of decades… like we should be up in arms by now we just can’t contend with so much overwhelming change!
Or reaming stadiums for sponsorships, renaming towns for sponsorships… we have a never ending stream of renamings to be mad at and wave our ineffectual fists at.
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 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)
It’s not like Microsoft has artisanal cartographers sitting around deciding what to call every geographic feature. Bing Maps ingests its base map data from providers, which in turn aggregate a bunch of authoritative, commercial, open, and government datasets.
And for things like official geographic names, government naming databases are often one of the authoritative upstream sources. So if the U.S. government changes the name in its official geographic database, it’s not surprising for that change to eventually propagate through map providers and into Bing.
Not only did I have no idea that Bing or Bing Maps still existed, but the very fact that they ever existed at all had slipped from my consciousness.
I guess Bing has an 8% market share, if you don't count services that use the Bing index (like DuckDuckGo does).
I wonder if Bing is worth it for them to still operate because of the people paying to use the index.
> In 2019, Verizon sold MapQuest to internet advertising company System1.
It's ad companies all the way down.
And this is a PR piece put out by the ad company that people eat up because orange man bad.
I think a lot of people are desperate for tech giants to stand up to the current US administration.
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!
I feel like it wasn't defiance as much as "we need to come up with a story why we don't have any developers who know how to update this".
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.
Recommend you instead use something like OsmAnd. Mapquest pulls data from OpenStreetMaps - might as well use an open source application.
https://osmand.net/
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 would give us 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.
> 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.
No, they show what the respective governments describe them as in official datasets etc.
> No, they show what the respective government datasets contain
Which matches popular usage in the respective countries. Your example is a non sequitir for explaining why matching popular usage can't possibly work.
For the popular usage of major geographical features to change is extremely rare, so I am skeptical that it's a huge amount of work to keep up with changes in popular usage.
On the back of a cocktail napkin, I drew a map of you...
Earlier: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49510969
Once again, private equity ruined another fine company ... with incessant advertisements
Take that Cory Doctrow [0]
[0] - https://boingboing.net/2019/10/10/do-webrings-next.html
I think Cory would be surprised to see how many Mapquest referrers show up in the referrer logs of brick-and-mortar businesses.