The Google is continuing it's widget march with two separate but important moves.
First and foremost, Google is running an advertising test with Lab Pixies. The recent ads promoting Gmail were basically embedded widgets. In the next 12 months we're going to see a lot more rich content put inside ad tiles. Given Google's prowess in contextually placing ads near content it seems to me as though they could easily work with advertisers to create rich widgets that show up in the right places at the right time - e.g. Widgetsense, Adsense for widgets. They also could acquire Lab Pixies.
Separately, Google also has added ratings and review features to the widget directory (Google calls them gadgets). Here's my page. You can rate my feed. On the Google Operating System's page you will find other blogs like it. The Google Blog has more
