On August 18, 2020, Google announced it would add detailed landcover data to Google Maps:

As of September 18, 2020, this update now appears to be live for most Google Maps users.

Landcover coloring (e.g., tan for deserts, green for grasslands, etc.) was initally added to Google Maps in 2013, as part of its first major redesign:

But this coloring only appeared on Google Maps’s first five zoom-levels...

...and it quickly faded out as you zoomed in on the map:

Now with Google’s latest update, landcover coloring has been extended all the way to Google Maps’s thirteenth zoom-level...

...which is eight more zoom-levels than before:

And if you compare Google’s old map with its new one...

...you’ll also notice that Google has changed the colors its uses to depict different landcover types:

According to Google’s press release for the update, these new colors are derived from Google’s satellite imagery:

We use computer vision to identify natural features from our satellite imagery, looking specifically at arid, icy, forested, and mountainous regions. We then analyze these features and assign them a range of colors on the HSV color model. For example, a densely covered forest can be classified as dark green, while an area of patchy shrubs could appear as a lighter shade of green.

So Google Maps’s oceans, for example, are now a darker shade of blue...

...because this more closely reflects the actual color of the oceans on satellite imagery:

And arid areas like Death Valley...

and the Grand Canyon...

...are no longer green.