Does anybody actually understand the implications of this? This press release is very light on information. What does this technology being added to Ethereum enable that wasn't possible before?
You can read the release notes here btw that point to the EIP and Github issues for "Precomipled contracts for modular exponetiation; elliptic curve addition, scalar multiplication and pairing" here: https://blog.ethereum.org/2017/09/14/geth-1-7-megara/
AFAIK there were only 4 precompiled contracts (ECDSARECOVER, SHA256, RIPEMD, and IDENTITY) so this is sort of a big deal, but I think the right way to go (being able to natively support zkSNARKs, or RingCT/RuffCT directly on ETH would be incredibly powerful.
The practical implications for this particular change is being able to run private tokens directly on Ethereum (vs globally visible transactions), although AFAIK the initial zkSNARKs implementation is not currently compatible w/ ERC20 tokens ATM.
Most applications of the pairing curve operations are probably going to be signatures and the like, not SNARKs for this reason.
A bit longer...
Normally when you send a payment with crypto currencies you leave a trace in the blockchain. i.e. other people can see which address is sending how much to where. This information is required so that the transaction can be validated by all nodes.
The zk-SNARK technology allows you to send a payment without revealing the who sent how much to where.