SSL potentially being considered as a ranking factor

[I'm H]

So Matt Cutts hinted at the fact there may be a possibility that encrypting your website with SSL may be considered as a ranking factor in the future.

At the end of the session, I asked Matt if this means Google is looking to give sites that enable SSL a ranking boost. Matt Cutts shrugged his shoulders and explained that if it was his choice, he would make it so. But he said, it is far from happening and there are people at Google that do not want this to happen.

Source : Google's Cutts: I Would Give SSL Sites A Ranking Boost

What are your thoughts on this ? many non-SEO webmasters see it as just an additional cost while others would praise such a move.

I can see it only being a good thing in a number of ways, the added cost of an SSL and recurring payment would mean that the webmaster has actively made the decision to spend more on protecting his site and users giving Google a clear signal the website is active and not been left.

With so many older websites and platforms still around which would struggle with SSL it may even act as a "catch up or lose out" strategy which could be good lead to revamps of out of date websites.