After reading all posts here, and the updated "What's new" page, even if some good work is done in this release...i just feel disapointed...for all the reasons that the community already spoke about (hi-poly, shadows...)
I'm afraid that Google is considering sketchup more than an add-on for google earth than a real independant and powerfull software. For me, all the updates are just to get the modelling a little easier, but are not real new features...this is just my feeling.
Hope this will evolve in the future.