http://www.google.com/relatedlinks/ Interesting move, I am going to sign up to see what really is this all about.
I wonder why people put Related Links for nothing. Put AdSense instead. Google says Related Links bring fresh content to the sites, but IMO the so-called fresh content doesn't seem to be useful to our site except drawing the visitor to other sites. Also, the two lines of related links, related webpage and related search aren't good contents, are they?
No not at all actually you will have to link to someone for free and Google will make money for free that way by advertising on you site.