Yesterday Google took a step towards making their profiles more helpful by launching Google Me. If you go and type "Me" into Google, you will get the option to set up your profile (you can also go to here). Once set up, your profile will show at the bottom of the search results. 

Who knows what this means for now, but I am going to guess that it's a great move for personal branding. They allow you to include your Gmail name as the URL, so my Google Profile URL is, http://www.google.com/profiles/Karen.Roy. I was a bit bummed that I couldn't change this to Karen Rubin at first, but I should have known Google would figure it out. When you search for Karen Rubin, my Karen.Roy Google Profile does show up. Smart folks over there at Google. 

Over at Mashable there is some concern about the amount of information this allows Google to know about you. I have to admit, I gave up that battle a while ago and fully embrace Google knowing all there is about me. When they take over the world, perhaps they will be nicer to people who have supported their domination.