For those who were hoping Penguin would launch immediately after New Years Day will have to wait a little longer.  Gary Illyes commented on Google that while they are getting closer, they have no specific date yet.

Illyes made a joke saying “the penguins are getting closer to freedom” but they do not have a specific date yet.

He then follows it up by saying that they won’t release Penguin unless they have extensively tested it first.  This isn’t unusual, especially since Penguin is expected to move to a real-time Penguin, from the usual “push button” type of Penguin update and refresh we have seen in the past.

While we should be expecting Penguin soon – they were very close to launching it before the holidays – I would have been surprised to see it launch immediately when everyone returned to work after the new year.  But hopefully the wait won’t be too much longer.

This also means you have a bit more time to work on those post-holiday disavow files to be ready for the real time release when it finally does come.