Huh? Holo has been around for a while now (1 year, 3 months). Yes, people in the iOS/Blackberry/Symbian world: Android is not the same as it was during the 1.x/2.x series.
The way Google apps behave now is way different than they were when ICS came out initially, especially things like swiping to show menu on the side. While Holo has been there for about a year, the details were never filled in by Google with a flagship first party app. Holo provided the polish, the usability in Google apps come from the way they attach functionality to gesture.
So I guess it is news-worthy for other people unfamiliar with how Google iterated their apps on Android to know that finally Google has nailed down pretty much all what it wanted to achieve.
