Is Google putting more weight on brands in rankings?

On February 26, 2009, Google software engineer Matt Cutts collected questions on Google Moderator and answered many of them on video.

Monica from Madison, WI asked:

Can you verify that Google is putting more weight on "brands" in search engine rankings? If the answer is "Yes" -- what is Google's definition of a brand? Inspired by Aaron Wall's post: http://www.seobook.com/google-branding