This is a real conflict of interest. Google needs to get out of the SEO business and stay out of it, as far as buying and partnering with SEO firms goes.

I think they should formalize their Webmaster classes to the point of creating a business model to teach people basic design skills and best practices but they don't need to be introducing bias into their search results.

I have used the feature a few times recently after Matts comments but was dissapointed with it, because the feature does not display all or even the useful whois information, all it displays is the registration and expiry date and a link to Domain Tools. As Micheal points out this appears a little unfair to other whois services and actually a free SEO handup, but I guess the Google engineers and mathematicians have calculated that it is enough of a relevancy improvement to be worth rolling out.

I can't get it to work at all here in the UK.

BB