What’s The Deal With Google Checkout?

I was doing a search today on Google and noticed that some of the search results had an interesting new icon next to them. It was like an eye magnet. My attention was immediately drawn. It was a Google Checkout. It seems a little unfair in terms of attracting attention, but it begs the following questions:

Is the Google checkout icon ever going to appear in the natural search results?
If you don’t have Google Checkout will you be penalized in terms of the legitimacy of your ad and your click through?

It remains to be seen. It seems to me like a blatant attempt by Google to direct more traffic to paid search and to drive merchants to use their checkout system.