Thats why Mercator is not a good projection even for comparing countries this way. Because for reasonably-sized countries, north and south are still distorted.
For an extreme example, try to lookup Chile and put it over Portugal, a similarly shaped country. Watch how Chile is vastly different whether you put its southern or its northern tip over Portugal.
On one hand Chile looks like it might be less than 10 times the size of Portugal, on the other hand it looks like it might be more than 20 times Portugal.
Maybe this explains why New Zealand looks like it has about as much land area as California even though California is actually about 60% larger than New Zealand.
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Interesting things happen when you drag a country onto the poles.
More information: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Map_projection
Thats why Mercator is not a good projection even for comparing countries this way. Because for reasonably-sized countries, north and south are still distorted.
For an extreme example, try to lookup Chile and put it over Portugal, a similarly shaped country. Watch how Chile is vastly different whether you put its southern or its northern tip over Portugal.
On one hand Chile looks like it might be less than 10 times the size of Portugal, on the other hand it looks like it might be more than 20 times Portugal.
Maybe this explains why New Zealand looks like it has about as much land area as California even though California is actually about 60% larger than New Zealand.