Google is really encouraging people to (1) sign up for Google+ and (2) mark their pages with rich snippets and authorship for the search results.
Google came out with a way to encourage publishers and webmasters to do both of these.
Google announced easier authorship attribution by using Google+ signin. Now when you integrate your publishing platform, note only WordPress.com and TypePad are supported now, with Google+ signin, Google will automatically associate your posts with your Google+ profile.
That means (1) more people will want to use Google+ and (2) those using Google+ will automatically have authorship if they login using it.
Of course, you'd have to configure your sites to use Google+ signin, which may or may not be easier than adding authorship data to your site.
Oh, also, they announced you can embed Google+ posts:
Forum discussion at Google+.
