The last time I heard a similar news from Google, it turned out they were solving a quantum phenomenon using a quantum phenomenon. It seems to be the same pattern here. Not to say it's not progress, but kind of feels like overhyped.
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A wind tunnel is a great tool for solving aerodynamics and fluid flow problems, more efficiently than a typical computer. But we don't call it a wind-computer, because it's not a useful tool outside of that narrow domain.
The promise of quantum computing is that it can solve useful problems outside the quantum realm - like breaking traditional encryption.
Then, we ignore today, and launder that into a gish-gallop of free-association, torturing the meaning of words to shoehorn in the idea that all the science has it wrong and inter alia, the quantum computer uses quantum phenomena to computer so it might be a fake useless computer, like a wind tunnel. shrugs
It's a really unpleasant thing to read, reminds me of the local art school dropout hanging on my ear about crypto at the bar at 3 am in 2013.
I get that's all people have to reach for, but personally, I'd rather not inflict my free-association on the world when I'm aware I'm half-understanding, fixated on the past when discussing something current, and I can't explain the idea I have as something concrete and understandable even when I'm using technical terms.
To that comment, the present result is a step up from these older experiments in that they a) Run a more structured circuit b) Use the device to compute something reproducible (as opposed to sampling randomly from a certain probability distribution) c) The circuits go toward simulating a physical system of real-world relevance to chemistry.
Now you might say that even c) is just a quantum computer simulating another quantum thing. All I'll say is that if you would only be convinced by a quantum computer factoring a large number, don't hold your breath: https://algassert.com/post/2500