I think I have an answer to that first question; Altruistically I'd like to think its to help facilitate more ml engineers and scientists. Realistically, amongst the other reasons noted by everyone else, its a way to attract enterprise users to their technology & invariably their cloud.
Consider a larger organization (1000+ people perhaps), if groups within that org can train their people with these materials or even send them to Google to be trained in this subject matter they can come back with a nice shiny credential. Whether that ultimately becomes useful to that individual or the group is up to them but really it helps google foster that relationship with the main organization to eventually snag higher contract values.
That probably made no sense, but I thought I'd give my two cents (however crummy they might look).
Consider a larger organization (1000+ people perhaps), if groups within that org can train their people with these materials or even send them to Google to be trained in this subject matter they can come back with a nice shiny credential. Whether that ultimately becomes useful to that individual or the group is up to them but really it helps google foster that relationship with the main organization to eventually snag higher contract values.
That probably made no sense, but I thought I'd give my two cents (however crummy they might look).