Google Video ID Tools Apparently Following Windows Vista Product-Development Calendar

Google’s video content verification system is starting to make Godot look punctual.

Since it was first promised, the technology’s release date has been slipping almost as badly as that of Windows Vista. End of 2006. Early 2007. And then, this past April, “within weeks.” “We are very close to turning it on,” Google CEO Eric Schmidt said at the time. “We are testing it with two or three partners now … In a few weeks it will be available for all.”

In Google parlance “a few weeks” is apparently six months or so, because according to Google attorney Philip Beck, the company doesn’t plan to roll out the copyright-filtering technology until the fall.

Fall. Meaning late September to late December. Not exactly the hardest of deadlines–especially given the caveat Google attached to it when asked for comment. “We hope to have the testing completed and technology available by sometime in the fall,” said a Google spokesperson. “But this is one of the most technologically complicated tasks that we have ever undertaken, and as always with cutting-edge technologies, it’s difficult to forecast specific launch dates.”

That sort of backpedaling isn’t likely to go over well with Hollywood, which isn’t exactly convinced of Google’s commitment to antipiracy systems. “Saying these systems are hard to build is like saying it’s hard to build cars with good gas mileage,” Roman Arzhintar, the former general counsel and a vice president of strategy at video site Guba, told News.com in June. “Sure it’s hard, but there are plenty of things you can do to keep material off a site–even one as large as YouTube’s.”