The gray Google homepage, he says, comes from a Material design look, which we actually covered a couple of weeks ago. But he captured that Google is testing a slightly updated home page.

Farther away, and the gray background drops almost to black. Adding a background light lets you create a gradient and can also blow out the background if you want to go fully white.

Today, Google Maps has a gray background for land and white roads, but this new version has a nearly white background for land and darker gray roads, just like Apple Maps.