Who the hell still uses MapQuest? Unless you’re driving down the highway listening to “Da Da Da” circa 1997, with printed-out directions sitting on the passenger-side seat of your Volkswagen Golf Cabrio, you’ve likely moved on to better mapping software from Google or Bing.
Unless you’re Arianna Huffington, that is, and you own a hefty stake in AOL, which purchased MapQuest in the early aughts. At TechCrunch Disrupt Monday, the Huffington Post founder desperately shilled for MapQuest on stage, even as moderator Michael Arrington all but tore her to pieces for the transparent boosterism.
“MapQuest is a huge piece of crap compared to Google Maps,” Arrington shot back at Huffington. “You’ve never used MapQuest–I don’t want to call you a liar on stage, but I’ll call you a liar if you say you use MapQuest.”
Arrington tends to be a controversial host, but here, he’s absolutely right. I’ve not met a single person in the past five years who uses MapQuest. Seriously. Not even my non-native-English-speaking grandmother, who for some reason still prefers “https://www.AskJeeves.com,” where she types in fully formed questions like, “Where are my car keys?” Not to be overly harsh on MapQuest, but traffic has plummeted on the site, according to Comcast–just don’t tell Huffington that.
“MapQuest is infinitely better than Google Maps,” she said, as Arrington barely restrained himself from laughing. “On top of it, it has an infinitely cooler name–MapQuest is about the journey.”
