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Last week, a new toolbar began appearing on Google for user and some took it as evidence of the ever-elusive "Google +1" or "Google Me" social network. Today, Google explained the appearance of this part of the bar as a simple method for users to keep track of what identity they're using as they browse online and use Google services.

In a blog post entitled "The freedom to be who you want to be..." the company explains that the toolbar help ensure users "know exactly what mode they're in when using Google's services."

Ever since last summer, the Internet has been awash in rumors of a Google social network. First, it was "Google Me" and later it was "Google +1". Last September, however, Google CEO Eric Schmidt explained that the company wasn't working on a stand-alone social network, but rather the interweaving of social elements. ""We're trying to take Google's core products and add a social component," said Schmidt.

Today, Google is doing just that. The company is updating its Social Search feature, which it first launched in 2009, and bringing a tighter, deeper integration of social connections to Google Search.

The enterprise community has been talking about the "social layer," for almost a year. It's the SaaS services such as Salesforce.com, Socialtext and Socialcast that have popularized the concept. Now the practice is entering a new phase.

The enterprise activity stream from SaaS services is flowing into consumer services such as Seesmic and Facebook. And now Google is looking at the social layer as the focal component of a service reportedly called Google Me that will surface activity across all Google products, including Google Apps.

The activity streams that surface information in the enterprise create a social layer that is valuable for the purposes of doing business. The activity stream in this context is a social aggregator. It works. In fact it woks far better than engaging in a pure social context.

As we get closer to - and hear more about - the launch of Google's upcoming social product, Google Me, the less and less it seems like a stand-alone social network and more like an interweaving of social connections into its existing offerings. It sounds eerily similar to those "social" search results that have lingered at the bottom of the results page and third-party extras like Rapportive, the Gmail add-on that gives you the social networking lowdown on your email contacts.

Nonetheless, some are saying that Google CEO Eric Schmidt acknowledged the upcoming launch of "Google Me". Really, it looks like he acknowledged the coming of "layers", not the stand-alone, Facebook-killing social network we've all discussed.

In this edition of the Weekly Wrapup, our newsletter summarizing the top stories of the week, we look at the state of the smartphone industry, study new stats showing Facebook's international market penetration, review 'The Oprah Effect' on Twitter, check out a new product called Google Me, analyze the closure of Web 1.0 icon GeoCities, and more. Also, we look at featured stories from ReadWriteHire, our new product which tracks hires in tech and new media.