I came across this article Extended SSL Validation, a bad taste joke, that I thought I'd share with you all.  If you didn't already know, it basically turns your address bar green in IE 7 indicating you're trustworthy, but apparently certain types of partnerships are excluded from eligibility.  They also speculate that there could potentially be search engine consequences of having, or not having, one of these certificates.  I'm not sure I buy that, but the whole thing certainly does smell not-so-fresh.   Just because the powers that be couldn't agree on how best to authenticate small business, does not mean that they are any less trustworthy.