Google is deciding what part of an article to highlight.  The eye naturally goes to the highlighted color.  This may be seen as convenient, but it helps to shorten attention span and limits other parts of the article from attention.  In the examples shown, this isn't very significant, but it is training so when more controversial subjects are presented, Google is directing attention.    More useful and less authoritarian would be the ability to share a search result or to link a page that includes USER-DEFINED highlighting.  This is more properly a browser function that can likely be implemented with an extension.  There are a number of highlighting tools (search chrome/apple store for 'highlighter') for browsers, but I don't think any of 'em enable sharing of highlighted pages other than screen capture.