From the perpetual news machine which is Google, it looks as though those folks down in the valley are headed full tilt into the local marketing/search/ advertising market; here are a few of my "highly speculative" reasons:

#1 - Advertisers need to set the time zone in their Google Adwords account (they were all previously set to Pacific Time). #2 - Coupled with new dayparting features and #3 - Reports that Google may introduce a CPA (cost per action) model for Adsense publishers, I would say it is highly likely that all that time you've spent with #4 - Google Base (to which you should be submitting content, product, services, homes, recipes, whatever) was immensely important and may be the programs which will catapult Google (thanks to...#5 - the full utilization of its pending payment processing system) even more full tilt into the local auction (and search) marketplace.

If this is indeed what is happening (I blogged about a possible relationship with Gbuy and Google Base back on March 1st, 2006) then it indicates a good opportunity to capitalize on underperforming markets such as the local Web business arena.