Hmm, seems like Google may be the ones who screwed up here, by not having a versioning system on Google Fonts. If they did (and guaranteed that fonts wouldn't change after being selected), this wouldn't have happened.
Then again, part of me wonders whether fonts should be updated in general. Version control and regular updates work fine for programs and what not, but fonts are really like images in that people only care what they look like at the time they use them. Changing a font's weight or design like this seems like the equivalent of a stock photo program swapping out images because they think the lighting wasn't done right or the choice of model was wrong. Yes it may be 'objectively' better, but it'd just break a lot of existing use cases for little gain.
Then again, part of me wonders whether fonts should be updated in general. Version control and regular updates work fine for programs and what not, but fonts are really like images in that people only care what they look like at the time they use them. Changing a font's weight or design like this seems like the equivalent of a stock photo program swapping out images because they think the lighting wasn't done right or the choice of model was wrong. Yes it may be 'objectively' better, but it'd just break a lot of existing use cases for little gain.
Still, that's just my thoughts on the situation.