Now this is the type of conversation I can get behind!

Eh? It's been a globe for years and years. You can even zoom out and view other planets and moons.

I've definitely seen this before (if you zoom out beyond the level where a projection makes sense, it switches to a globe). I was actually a little surprised when I tried it just now, and it stayed on the projection at any zoom level; I thought the globe was the only behavior until I read this and checked it.

It was a globe forever on desktop. Changes to a projection when you zoom in enough.

They surely have a fallback in case someone's PC did not support rendering the globe fast enough

Forgot google maps was on Desktop 😅

For me, it's gone back and forth between a globe and a projection a few times over the past 5-10 years or so.

I've seen it before, but never thought to seek out the projection, but I could set the maps to "Globe View" under the layers button in the down left corner. It's much nicer now :)

never in my life have I seed this

Mercator projection is best, with gnomonic and equirectangular coming in at distant second and third. Globe perspective projection has niche uses. All others are useless/solve a problem that is irrelevant.