This is undoubtedly incredibly impressive as a feat of engineering. Detecting codes on those sample images with >95% accuracy is no mean feat. No doubt Google uses its muscle for many worthier things than this, and the learning from this project will be applied to many more 'serious' problems. I think what this blog post triggers for some people is just a further step down the road from Google as it was - a tech first solutions later company that solved interesting problems because they were interesting - to Google of today/the future - a big corporation that acts pretty much like any other, but with a few neat tools in its toolbox.