Lake Ontario is no more on Google Maps in the US. Google changed the name of easternmost of the Great Lakes to “Lake America” late Saturday, days after President Donald Trump ordered its rebranding in official government databases.
\n\nTrump issued the executive order on Thursday as part of an ongoing feud over tariffs with Canada, whose capital province is called Ontario. It followed a similar order he issued in January 2025 to rename the Gulf of Mexico as the Gulf of America as part of a fight with the US trading partner to the south.
\n\nGoogle, Apple, Microsoft, and other maps providers adopted the Gulf of America naming as soon as the US Department of the Interior updated its records, which came a couple of weeks after Trump’s order. So it was no surprise that when those records—which are used to determine names on roadway signs and in government literature—reflected Lake America, digital maps from Google also quickly took on the new name.
\n\nApple Maps and Bing Maps have not yet reflected the change but are expected to. In fact, the map for the federal government’s Geographic Names Information System database, which informs these changes, still showed Lake Ontario as…
Original source: https://www.wired.com/