I think you're mistaken; the projection you get when you naively plot lat/lon as x/y is Plate Carrée (aka equirectangular). This visualization is Google Mercator.

You see a lot of Google Mercator because it's the native projection of Google Maps and pretty much all subsequent slippy map libraries and tilesets. It's a great projection when you want something that works easily with map tiles and is zoomable. But it's not a great choice for a whole-earth visualization.