Google Maps Faces Fury for Caving to Trump

Politics admin August 30, 2026 0 Comments

Google Maps is facing backlash over its latest capitulation to President Donald Trump’s demands.

The company has renamed Lake Ontario to “Lake America” after Trump, 80, signed an executive order to rename it amid his trade war with Canada. Their capitulation, coming months after it changed the name of the Gulf of Mexico to Trump’s preferred “Gulf of America,” is not going over well.

“Hey you gave one of the Great Lakes the wrong name; pretty embarrassing mistake so you might want to fix that,” one user wrote on X.

“Why do you always keep changing names of stuff whenever Trump announces it? It’s ok to ignore that paranoid weirdo,” another said.

“Google Maps is so f—ing embarrassing man,” another user said. “genuinely pathetic stuff.”

“I hope we get a hearing after the midterms where someone at Google explains why they decided to go along with this bulls–t while Apple stayed normal,” commentator Matthew Yglesias wrote.

Apple Maps has yet to update its maps with Trump’s preferred name, although Apple Maps did rename the Gulf of Mexico to be the “Gulf of America” after Trump signed an executive order renaming it as such.

Google Maps does have at least one defender of the name change, White House Communications Director Steven Cheung, who touted the move online.

“It’s official! LAKE AMERICA on Google Maps,” he wrote.

MapQuest has said it will not be changing the name, and instead launched a new tool that allows users to rename it themselves to whatever they want.

The U.S. can’t force Canada to adopt the name change, and Canada has already pushed back. Ontario Premier Doug Ford has put up a new, large sign in his province with Lake Ontario’s name and reading “Now and Always.”

Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney, who said earlier this month that Canada needs to rethink its relationship with the U.S. because of Trump’s erratic policies, has also pushed back on the name-change power grab.

“This lake is called Lake Ontario- today and forever,” Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney wrote on X, adding that the name “dates well before the Canadian Confederation and the Declaration of Independence of the United States of America.”