Google Social Share Button

According to SEO by the Sea Google recently filed a patent to allow users to socially share information they like from websites.

The patent information:

Propagating Promotional Information on a Social Network
Invented by Vinay Goel, Rahul Kulkarni, Subramanya Srikanth Belwadi, Siddartha Naidu, and Ramanathan V. Guha
Assigned to Google Inc.
US Patent Application 20100332330
Published December 30, 2010
Filed: June 30, 2009

The present disclosure generally relates to creating and providing promotional information (e.g., advertising, public service announcements, etc.) to users of a social network (e.g., FACEBOOK, MYSPACE, ORKUT, LINKEDIN, TWITTER, etc.). A social network can be an online system that provides a forum for geographically separated users to interact with one another, where those users have defined a relationship between one another. Users can control who can view their information by identifying particular relationships with other users, and can also find new user from the group of other people who are "friends" of their own friends. Social networks can be aimed at different types of social interaction, such as friendship and business networking. A user of a social network can have a profile page (e.g., a web page on the social network) that provides information about the user to other users of the social network. A profile can include information regarding a user's acquaintance relationships (e.g., friends, colleagues, schoolmates, etc.) on the social network.

This seems to be another way for Google, who struggles  on the social media front, to attempt to establish some relevancy in that field.