When Google made a deal with Warner Music Group last year, it promised to have piracy and copyright management systems in place by the end of the year.  As DailyTech reminded us all yesterday, that deadline has come and past and YouTube is as of yet still unchecked as far as content piracy goes.  Google was able to all but silence talks of lawsuits against YouTube for copyright infringement based largely on the assumption that a company with the financial resources and brain power that Google has would be able to swiftly and effectively tackle the situation.

While there's nothing to indicate that Google is not, in fact, planning to keep its deal with Warner Music Group, the fact remains that Google missed the deadline it set for itself without so much as a peep of explanation.

Missed deadlines are nothing new in the business world.  In fact, far fewer companies probably hit their deadlines than those who miss them.  Many of these deadlines have to do with product launches or service upgrades.  Without doing any research I can think of two companies right off the top of my head that missed product launch deadlines this year:  Mozilla and Microsoft.  While missed product launch deadlines are frustrating to users, they don't normally form the hinge of strategic partnerships and deals.  The Google deadline does.

Bottom line:  companies need to either learn to keep their word or start being more realistic in their abilities.

Anyone who's ever followed any Microsoft product launch knows that the company is notoriously over-optimistic about it's ability to push out new products.  And months before the Mozilla Foundation announced that they were pushing back the release of Firefox 2.0, it was obvious that the organization would never be able to squeeze their web browser out the door on time.  When Google announced in September that they would have piracy systems in place on YouTube by the end of the year, it should have raised a few eyebrows.  Could any company, Google included, create, test, and launch something as complex as a copyright management system in three months?

What's the point in publishing release dates if they're never met?