Microsoft doesn’t want to share much information with anyone these days. After a government ruling that sided with Google, Microsoft was supposed to provide a beta of Vista SP1 before the end of this year.
We may not be seeing a final version of Vista SP1 until 2008 but the beta should be available before the end of this year so nothing has really changed unless Microsoft chooses not to release the beta.
The US government has told Microsoft that the beta has to be released before the end of this year. The consequences that the company will face if it does not comply were not revealed. The reason this happened is Microsoft has to make some concessions to Google in order to make the built-in search configurable to use third party tools, if you so desire, I don’t.