AZBlogger,
yes, I meant ages. Stitching together an existing genome has not been done (there was no practical application to do so), usually you take an existing one and cure it from whatever you do not need. This has been done extensively since the 70s. Introducing a genome into a cell that has been cured of its own genome is also not new. To my knowledge the first experiments in that regards were conducted in frogs (Rana pipiens I think, or maybe a Xenopus species...) by King and Brigss in the 50s. In a eukaryote, no less.
Now they have the money to do it bottom up. Still, the result is hardly changed from what has already been done.
In other words, I do not see any significant progress in that area. It essentially only means that in order to create a mutant you can stitch together a genome, provided you got the money, instead of manipulating an existing one (though results are the same).
It would have been more fascinating, if they really had made a patchwork genome, from different bacteria. But I think that it would not have worked that easily.