Tag: MapQuest

‘Gulf of America’: Compliance and Resistance

Published on by Jonathan Crowe
A screenshot from Apple Maps, showing how the Gulf of Mexico is labelled as Gulf of Mexico (Gulf of America).
Apple Maps (screenshot)

Compliance

While it was reported that Apple would comply with the “Gulf of America” renaming, I wasn’t sure what Apple would do outside the U.S.; now it appears that it will follow Google’s lead and show both names. Above is what I see in Canada; I wonder what Apple is showing Mexican users.

Meanwhile, Axios, citing its mainly U.S. audience, is adopting “Gulf of America” (HuffPost, The Hill, The Wrap) but had this to say about the White House blacklisting the Associated Press: “At the same time, the government should never dictate how any news organization makes editorial decisions. The AP and all news organizations should be free to report as they see fit. This is a bedrock of a free press and durable democracy.”

Resistance

The name change is broadly unpopular and people are finding ways to resist it. If “Gulf of America” becomes a way to signal compliance with the regime, it looks like “Gulf of Mexico,” even on a t-shirt (which I’ve seen already), will signal noncompliance.

Bryce Bostwick has released a Chrome extension that restores “Gulf of Mexico” to Google Maps. As he says, “There are a lot of scary executive orders being issued right now. This is not one of the most important ones. But it might be the easiest to defy.” This apparently took some reverse engineering, as he explains in a 24-minute video.

MapQuest—remember MapQuest?—has not as yet complied with the Trump executive order; in fact, they’ve decided to have some fun with it, with a tongue-in-cheek tool that allows you to rename the Gulf yourself.

A user-generated map of the Gulf of Mexico from Mapquest’s gulfof.mapquest.com tool, labelling the Gulf of Mexico as the Gulf of Compliance in Advance.
MapQuest (gulfof.mapquest.com)

Previously: Naming the Gulf; Google Maps to Use ‘Gulf of America’–Others Not So Much; More Reactions to ‘Gulf of America’; Google and the Gulf; ‘Gulf of America’: Apple Conforms, AP Punished for Not Doing So; ‘Gulf of America’ Isn’t Going Over Well; Is ‘Gulf of Mexico’ Worth Fighting For?

Remembering MapQuest

Published on by Jonathan Crowe

The tenth installment of James Killick’s “12 Map Happenings that Rocked our World” series focuses on a company James actually worked at: MapQuest, which grew very, very rapidly between its launch in 1996 (James outlines its antecedents) to its IPO and acquisition by AOL a few years later. And then:

The new management seemed to have very little interest in anything to do with MapQuest, particularly as it related to product road map and strategy. And with the layoffs and hiring freeze there weren’t enough resources to do anything substantial even if there was a good plan.

I tried to make matters clear and pleaded with the powers that be: MapQuest was a site built on map data but it didn’t make maps. In fact 98% of the map data was licensed from third parties. I knew MapQuest had to build a moat around the product otherwise someone else could swoop in, license the same data and build a better product.

And you won’t win any prizes for guessing who did.

Previously: Remember MapQuest?

MapQuest to the Rescue?

Published on by Jonathan Crowe

Adam Engst of TidBITS had a specific routing problem that only one map app could solve. The answer, as they say, will surprise you: “When faced with needing to visit 43 different addresses, what was the most efficient route? It’s easy enough to enter an address into Apple’s Maps or Google Maps, and even add an extra stop or two. But 43 stops in an optimal route? […] A little research revealed that MapQuest—remember MapQuest from the days when we all printed directions?—offers precisely what I needed.”

Remember MapQuest?

Published on by Jonathan Crowe

Search Engine Land: “Earlier this week Mapquest was sold by corporate parent Verizon to System1, an ad-tech company you’ve probably never heard of for an undisclosed amount, which was ‘not material enough for Verizon to file paperwork.’ That’s a metaphor for how far Mapquest has fallen since its heyday as the dominant online mapping site roughly a decade or so ago.” Verizon got MapQuest as part of its purchase of AOL in 2015. [Brian, James]

Sending Driving Directions to Your Phone

Published on by Jonathan Crowe

Time’s John Patrick Pullen compares how easy or difficult it is to send driving directions to your phone using maps from Apple, Google and Microsoft before coming up with a surprise winner: “I pulled up MapQuest for a punchline on this story, but the joke’s on all of us. MapQuest is, by far, the easiest way to get maps from your desktop to your phone.” I really ought to try this out myself and see if I agree with him.