• San Jose Mercury News, Friday, February 23, 2007 11 AM

As we heard yesterday from CEO Eric Schmidt, Google will begin filtering out copyrighted video and other content on YouTube. The online giant has been widely criticized for failing to release an online filtering service sooner; many believe Google was stalling for lack of a better plan.

However, there is no YouTube filtering technology. Rather, the paper claims that like News Corp.'s MySpace, the online video giant has agreed to license content-recognition software from Audible Magic. That would be interesting, considering that Schmidt yesterday described the task of building and managing copyright protection as being both complex and arduous.

Schmidt's exact words about the technology: "It is not some product you can just build and leave alone." Was Schmidt bluffing, or has Google decided to abandon what it was working on? Or is Google licensing the technology and having difficulty implementing it? Google may now even decide to buy Audible Magic.

To a certain extent, Google must have been stalling. The company has been backed into a corner now that media companies are pulling their content from YouTube. The proof would be if Google doesn't have content-recognition software built after months of promises.

Read the whole story at San Jose Mercury News »