that's interesting progress.

There's already a buzz about it among the tin-foil hat community. Rumors of Google observing your databases, plugins, server, etc... Poppycock IMHO.

How does it differ from visiting the regular WM tools?

Google has something to say about it.

We’ve heard from many publishers using WordPress that they’re looking for an easier way to work with Google products within the platform. Today, we’re excited to share the beta release of our official Google Publisher Plugin, which adds new functionality to publishers’ WordPress websites. If you own your own domain and power it with WordPress, this new plugin will give you access to a few Google services — and all within WordPress.

Please keep in mind that because this is a beta release, we’re still fine-tuning the plugin to make sure it works well on the many WordPress sites out there.Google Publisher Plug-in (Beta) [googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com]

This first version of the Google Publisher Plugin currently supports two Google products:

Google AdSense: Earn money by placing ads on your website. The plugin links your WordPress site to your AdSense account and makes it easier to place ads on your site -- without needing to manually modify any HTML code.

Google Webmaster Tools: Webmaster Tools provides you with detailed reports about your pages' visibility on Google. The plugin allows you to verify your site on Webmaster Tools with just one click.

It's brilliant. I'm lazy and this is a match made in heaven. Seriously I love this.