Elapsed time in seconds?

In the cck_taxonomy_ssu_widget function there's something I don't understand. Why is there a start and end time, and why does cck_taxonomy_ssu.module print elapsed time as a status message? I'm guessing that this is somehow useful for debugging, but it's confusing to get these status messages.

Line 358:

      drupal_set_message('<pre>Elapsed time in seconds? ' .print_r($elapsed, TRUE). '</pre>');