Google Maps Adds Better Geography And Terrain Features

Google has added better terrain data to Google Maps. This is a major update, but right now, not many people seem to be talking about it on the Internet. Maps now has color gradation and textures to depict vegetation, mountain ranges and other land formations, plus labels for them.

When you zoomed out on the world, the map would be a mundane white. Now, it's got some color. And quite a bit of it.
Here's one of the examples Google uses on their Maps blog.

Northern South America before

Northern South America after

You can see a texture for mountain ranges as well.

To see these changes, you need to go to map view (not satellite) and turn on the terrain option in the features bar on the right. Otherwise, the map stays white at some lower zoom levels and only gets color when you go far out. And the mountains and land formations are not visible without it enabled at any zoom level.

[Google Lat-Long Blog]

Google Maps Adds Better Geography And Terrain Features