Google Maps on the desktop now shows Earth as a globe

Before when you zoomed out on Google Maps, our planet Earth would be depicted as a flat surface. Now, a new update coming to the desktop interface changes this into a globe, which allows the map to show the Earth more accurately than it has in the past. With this new 3D Globe Mode, “Greenland’s projection is no longer the size of Africa.”

Before this, Google Mpas has been using the Mercator projection, which projects the map on a flat surface. This projection became largely standardized and made it easy to print onto maps. But this also presented a distorted image of the Earth. Those near the equator scaled relative to one another, while those closer to the poles looked larger than they are. As the example above, Mercator maps make Greenland appear larger than Africa, even though in reality, Africa is 14 times larger.

Source: The Verge