That's a new sidebar feature that goes where ads have traditionally gone. Google has decided to literally promote G+ over ads, which is a story in itself, but a totally different one.

It doesn't change the search results in the main column.

How is it a "totally different" story when the two changes are launched at the same time under the same name ("Search Plus Your World") and both underplay the dominant social networks?

They seem rather related parts of the same story.

You make a big deal about not "ascribing evil motives to Google" but I think it's pretty clear that Google is going all in on G+ and both aspects of Search+ that Danny Sullivan has taken issue with are directly related to this.

I don't care for the word "evil" because I think Google may be perfectly within their rights to do this but it's also very unlike how Google has historically operated. Inasmuch as that historical behavior personified "don't be evil", well it's hard to be shocked when people call this new, tough negotiating Google "evil".

Yep, you're right.

There are two aspects to the new G+ search features: indicating that a link was shared by one of your friends, and the sidebar that links relevant G+ profiles. The former is presumably limited by rel=nofollow, but the latter has no relation to rel=nofollow.

If you search for "WWE", Google doesn't show you the @wwe Twitter account in the sidebar. The fact that Google is told not to follow any outgoing links posted by the @wwe account isn't a valid explanation for that, especially when you consider that (a) Google definitely has twitter.com/wwe indexed, and (b) twitter.com/wwe almost certainly has a high PageRank due to incoming links.

Thank you. A lot of people are confusing these two aspects.

I'll add one more thing though: Schmidt actually claimed they didn't have "permission" to include Twitter and Facebook pages in the suggested profiles sidebar. That's just plain false.

Watch at about 1:10 in the video. http://marketingland.com/schmidt-google-not-favored-happy-to...