It's too bad Maps doesn't behave more like 'Earth' does / did (?). I haven't even installed Google Earth in years, but now that I zoom a maps window all the way out I'm sad it doesn't become a sphere projection in 3D.

You don't have to install it anymore.

https://earth.google.com/web/

Weird, when I zoom out on https://www.google.com/maps/ it becomes a globe, I thought that's the default behaviour, but maybe I changed a setting at some point?

Google maps zooming out does become a globe for me (Firefox/Linux), why not for you? I see it has an on/off option for globe in the layers selection.. let's check in incognito.. aha, it's non-globe by default!

Click Layers > Click More > Lower left, check the Globe View.

That's buried levels of undiscoverable.

They take up more space; a map can be folded/rolled up for storage or hung on a wall. Games like risk also much easier to do with a 2d map.