Eric Enge interviewed Googler Maile Ohye relatively recently and provided an interesting summary of the interview on his blog. In the interview, Maile talks about the WebmasterTools API (especially with regards to extracting link data), using sitemaps for discovery, spam reports, paid links and PageRank, Flash indexing, and geographic targeting. Of particular importance to forum members was Maile's statement that Flash indexing has improved and now links that Google is able to discern actually pass PageRank.
Eric does a great job talking about all these features and functions on his blog post, and Maile also does a wonderful job explaining the variety of offerings, so have a read.
Forum discussion continues at WebmasterWorld.