Definitely has a little less polish than Font Awesome or a few others, but the sheer number of icons and the SVG/sprite/PNG options are a huge deal. Google is making a ton of great decisions on the UI/Design front.

"Today, Google Design are open-sourcing 750 glyphs as part of the Material Design system icons pack. The system icons contain icons commonly used across different apps, such as icons used for media playback, communication, content editing, connectivity, and so on. They're equally useful when building for the web, Android or iOS." Very nice resource for designers!

Doing something like this is always smart. Get people used to the feel of your OS / product elsewhere, and there's less friction when they pick it up for the first time. If these are used heavily in apps and on sites, there's already a comfort with the UI (assuming the icons are used properly).

Am I missing something, or did this occur nearly 4 years ago. I mean I love me some MD Icons, but I'm curious why this is making headlines today?

List of all 3500+ Material Design Icons https://bbbootstrap.com/icons