Contacts and calendars have been synced to the cloud on Android for years, it is nothing new at all. Honestly, Google's cloud services are more robust than iCloud. For example, videos can be backed up to the cloud automatically, whereas with iCloud it cannot reside there. Instead it merely uploads it to the cloud and then downloads it to connected devices.
Either one of those two cloud syncing methods could be more desirable depending on the user. I'd rather have them on all of my devices so they can be accessed when there's no Internet connection available.