I wonder what that means, exactly 

Dave pointed to an NYT story about Google buying 5% of AOL.

This bit popped out at me: "Google, which prides itself on the purity of its search results, agreed to give favored placement to content from AOL throughout its site, something it has never done before."

You'd hope this favored placement doesn't mean the results are sprinkled in with everything else. Some kind of treatment, off on its own, like sponsored results, would be the only ethical way to do it, don't you think?