[goldfeld]

The Google stuff looks eerily like Metro to me, but perhaps flat design with strict guidelines and good principles converge into similar looking aesthetics.

I just find "material design" obnoxious, pathological cargo-culting and can't bring myself to elocute it, except maybe if I'm referring to someone designing synthetic leather.

[Kudos]

The flatness isn't the key point of Material Design, the interactions are.