am not sure if everyone is seeing this, but after signing up with Picasa Web Albums, I came across this in my Gmail account.
This is interesting as Picasa Web Albums is similiar to Flickr.com (owned by Yahoo) in the affect that it allows you to comment, rate, etc. In order for you to access it, you need a Google Account (which Gmail creates by default).
Perhaps the search engine giant is tying all of its features together to create a Google portal after all. 