there is something odd about this announcement. since it is no harder for a black hat publisher to switch to https than a white hat publisher, this signal will likely get noisy very quickly. i think google knows this, and its why they rarely specify ranking signals.

so, then really, they are just using their dominance in search to effect change. now, you may agree with the change (they did something similar by announcing pageload time as a signal), but it makes me a little uneasy for google to leverage their dominance in this way even if i happen to agree with the goal.