Google's staff probably got lots of gold stars when they were in kindergarten, and they liked the idea so much, they've built it into products such as Gmail, Google Reader … and now, Search.
The Official Google Blog says: "With stars, you can simply click the star marker on any search result or map and the next time you perform a search, that item will appear in a special list right at the top of your results when relevant."
The star marker that turns gold will also be familiar to regular Twitter users. Using it on a tweet adds it to your Favorites folder.
Stars also sync with Google Bookmarks and the Google Toolbar, if you happen to use either of those.
Google says that Stars replace its SearchWiki service, which hardly anyone seemed to use. However, if you did, your SearchWiki data has not been thrown away.
Stars also enable users to "favourite" things instead of bookmarking them. This could be part compensation for the unfriendly implementation of bookmarking in Google's Chrome browser. It also provides another example of a Google lock-in system, since you can take your bookmarks to another search engine, but you can't take your Google Stars with you.
The Stars feature for Google Search and Maps will be rolled out in stages, so you'll just have to wait for it to appear. I haven't got it yet….
