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Not sure about the patentibility of those patents (they are still all in the application phase, and I have not read them), but to my understanding patents a) have to be tested before court and b) often fall back to less generic claims in practice (claim no. N, with N > 1), if not being completely invalidated. Now, I expect Google to have good patent lawyers, but time will show the value of those patents.

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Usually when patent applications are made they are written up to be as general as possible and will then steadily be whittled down until they're accepted.

That said, I really don't see how a number of these will get even close to validation. Quite a few are describing an absolutely generic, everyday process with so much prior art it's insane (recurrent neural network?). If I'm missing anything here I'd love if someone could correct and inform me.

Many times companies will file patents on any IP they design that is broad enough to disrupt their market. With the patent being exceptionally broad, it ironically leaves less room for questions when the patent request is filed. One would hope everyone on the Government side of patents would be well versed enough in the given technology but unfortunately that is rarely the case so having a broad patent is sometimes easier to push through.

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