“Official Google Webmaster Central Blog: Introducing Rich Snippets”

Rich Snippets give users convenient summary information about their search results at a glance. We are currently supporting data about reviews and people. When searching for a product or service, users can easily see reviews and ratings, and when searching for a person, they’ll get help distinguishing between people with the same name.

Point one: what’s the point of ignoring <meta> for years if you’re going to add new bogus information for webmasters to put in? Point two: when I see a star rating on a Google result, I expect that to be rating the search result, not to be the “item”’s rating pulled directly from the site. Whoever approved that?