Yup. This is pretty much default view for all my searches now. The who and authoriship seem very important to Google right now. So if you're nobody you won't do well. Issue for start-ups?

Sounds like Google likes this feature and will not remove it unless they figure users don't like it: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fpbpfjzEBAM

Sorry this sounds a bit silly to me. I vote against.

Google understand when it's looking at an eCommerce site and it does not expect lengthy articles on each product. So if I was you I would focus on creating product descriptions as useful and unique as possible and allow customer feedback and reviews which will grow your natural content.

Focus your links towards the main domain / categories / product pages. If you do have articles use them to point relevant anchor text links (in moderation) to products they describe.

We have implemented something similar in the past with no negative effects. Same deal with tabbed content. If this type of display is convenient for the user and not only served to search engines then you're within the search engine guidelines. Even if you do get in trouble (very unlikely) there is always a re-inclusion request in which you can explain things to Google.

One thing to keep in mind is Google's cloaking filter they've been writing about this recently as they start to compare what is displayed to them to what user would see. I cannot know exactly to what extent the site may vary in appearance with your overlay feature.

Visit: Google Webmaster Tools > Labs > Instant Previews

See the last paragraph in the attached image.

dejan-seo-preview.PNG

I have used PowerMapper and am relatively happy with it. It fails miserably on large scale websites. I've spent days researching website structure visualistion and found that there are no rubust industry strength solutions out there available to general community. We're in the process of writing our own software for that reason.