I mean fuck Google and all, but this is just an announcement that they are copying Firefox's way of display download information. Is there something inherently wrong with that?
I mean is this your first time hearing corporate/marketing speech on the internet? I don't like it myself either, but it is not like it kills children in africa...
As someone who has geeked out on fonts since we were trading bitmap fonts for System 5 on the Mac, I can say that article is fine. Believe it or not, all of that actually matters to graphic design/text design people.