If this is old news, you can slap me with a wet noodle. I saw this small shopping cart image in the text ad.
Interesting, I havent seen it before but from a quick glance on their website they are using the new Google Checkout system. Could be some sort of promotion system advertising websites that use Google Checkout.
They had been using little shopping cart icons before, but I'm not sure if they were in the content ads or just search ads, see: http://www.seroundtable.com/archives/004033.html
Here is some more information from Google, they call them "Google Checkout badges" https://checkout.google.com/support/sell/bin/topic.py?topic=8667
Hmmm. Google seems to add more and more images to the text link ads. That sucks, as it really screws up the blending...
... why Google didn't want our competing images beside their ads. Like I have said before, Google found out (no wonder with all posts about it!!) how good it was with images to get people to click and they wanted it all by themselves.