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Google Faces Plagiarism Questions Over Chinese Software

Posted by Zonk on from the i'll-just-take-a-look-and-yoink dept.

yaohua2000 writes "Google's laboratory in China has launched its first product, a Pinyin Input Method Editor. The software allows the romanized characters to be translated to more traditional Chinese symbols , via entering on a QWERTY keyboard. Users soon discovered that the data Google used for the product was unusually similar to the data used by a Chinese rival, Sogou. Google has evaded the question about software similarities, reports PC World. 'The similarities, which included an error involving the name of a celebrity, were noted on a Google Labs discussion board about its Pinyin IME. Users noted that entering the Pinyin pinggong into the Google IME incorrectly produced the name of Feng Gong, an actor and comedian.'"

2 of 187 comments (clear)

  1. This is big news in China by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    Unfortunately, since the IME is only used by Chinese speakers, most reports and discussions about this are in Chinese as well. For example, Sina has published an announcement (in Chinese) from Google admitting that they indeed "used data from non-Google sources" during the testing stage.

    There were actually much more evidence than the PC World article mentioned, the most convincing being that Google IME included many names of the developers of Sogou IME.

    Although according to the other users (I don't use Google Pinyin myself now, or Windows for that matter), the error has been fixed - and those developer names has been removed - in the most recent version of Google IME (1.0.17.0).

    Ming

  2. Re:not saying it's the case by eggstone · · Score: 4, Informative

    Well, if it is kind of programing bug, then the reasoning is fine. However, google is simply using sougou's dictionary. In fact, sougou's dictionary contains several developers' names which can be produced as the 1st choice if input their name, such as Tong Zi Jian, Zhao Li Yang, Lv Jie Yong, and Ru Li Yun. It is impossible for google to use sougou's developers' names in google's dictionary except they are simply copying the whole dictionary. Notice that although those names were in google's Pinyin input 1.0.15.0. they are removed in the newer version 1.0.16.0.