They are just trying to do whatever they can to stay dominant in the search market, since search is so profitable. Go google power!
Well considering the Microsoft twitter announcement today this comes as no surprise. Honestly it sounds like yet another thing to clutter up the serp results. Withh all the ads, shopping results, video how much more do we need. Atleast with this it sounds like you can control it if you do not have your social networks tied to your Google account.