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Google Faces Plagiarism Questions Over Chinese Software
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.'"
Blame the Sogou authors, and call them inhuman. Also say it isn't plagarism because it's beta.
Let me be the first to say... WHAT?
Coming up with the same algorithm isn't terribly unlikely. Structuring it in the same way is not uncommon either. Making exactly the same mistakes, however, is hard to believe.
Am I part of the core demographic for Swedish Fish?
while i am not insisting that it is the case, it seems like it could easily be the same logic flaw. Different algorithms and code can produce the same mistake if you are using the same mis guided logic behind the problem. Thats why you see the same bugs in students' code in university, even when worked on separatly during a lab.
insight through the mind
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
Strange how you wouldn't have said this if it was Microsoft.
You're definitely new here. We complain about Microsoft pinching other people's work continuously here on Slashdot, mainly because Microsoft does, continuously. We also regularly bitch about how the current patent and copyright systems here in the United States are seriously flawed. And the OP is correct in pointing out that China has always been, shall we say, less than respectful of others' rights in this regard ("blatantly ripping them off" is as good a description as any.)
What was your complaint again?
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
This wouldn't be the first time that Google used other people's software in their live services without due credit.
Another example is the spell checkers that Google's Gmail have for the dozen or so languages to support. Nowhere to be found is an explanation of where these spell-checkers come from, so it would be safe to assume that Google wrote them themselves, or at least bought them from some company that allowed them not to give them credit? Well, the reality is more sad. It turns out that Google actually uses the free-software project, aspell, to do its spell-checking, and the dozens of person-years that went into writing the actual dictionaries for aspell were simply co-opted by Google. When you spell-check in some language X, you do not see any credit for the person who wrote the dictionary, or to aspell. Even if you look very hard in the documentation, this credit is nowhere to be found. It's all very legal under the GPL, but ugly behavior, especially for scientists (like most of the Google who's-who) who are used to giving credit where credit is due.
And how do I know that Google's Gmail uses free-software spell-checkers? Well, I used a method very similar to that described in the article. I'm the author of one of the dictionaries that Google "adopted", and I deliberately inserted some "misspelled" (aka "easter-egg") words into the dictionary, so I can immediately recognize a spell-checker based on my dictionary - and it turns out that Google's Gmail spell-checker is indeed based on my dictionary.
So it's great that Google reuses other software - free-software and commercial software - but they should learn to give credit where credit is due. It doesn't have to be the google.com homepage (of course) - even in some deep-down help page would do.
Why is it that saying anything negative about another country is always turned into a discussion about racism and bigotry? It immediately poisons further dialog when it is applied without reason. If you have some reason to think the OP is prejudiced I'd like to hear it, because I didn't read that into his comment. I hear a lot of negative comments about the United States on Slashdot (yours, for one, which is interesting) but I don't immediately conclude that prejudice is the root of it. Sometimes it is, but it's nice to find that out first before jumping to any conclusions.
... more power to 'em.
... it prejudices any argument you make after that point.
The unfortunate fact of the matter is that China's government and industry are completely unconcerned about the source of the technology that they mass-produce and sell to everyone. They just don't care, period, and I suppose when you get right down to it there's no reason they should. On the other hand, that just means there's no reason why we should respect their "intellectual property" either, and when their scientists and engineers come up with something good they damn well shouldn't expect us to concern ourselves over their rights either. If Google did indeed rip off their Chinese counterparts my feeling is
So, it's not a statement of prejudice (e.g. "I dislike Chinese people because they are Chinese, or have yellow skin, or slanted eyes, or talk funny") but a legitimate observation on the state of affairs in that country.
Just watch it when you start playing the race card without a good reason
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
Not to mention, all these observations are made only by the Chinese.. thats what "users" means right? This would be a bad assumption, since I know quite a few people who are not Chinese or Chinese descendants who can at the least speak or write some Chinese (either Mandarin or Cantonese, depending on the person).
And, of course, the company is clearly making a huge deal out of this right now aren't they? Even though, according to the article that nobody seems to have read, Sohu.com hasn't actually done anything yet. But I must be new here, too. I am under the assumption everyone actually bothers to read the articles and see anything more than what they want to see. I don't think this matters. It is still fair to say, no one should bitch because it would really be the pot calling the kettle black.
That's funny, because your excerpt reminds me of Lewis Carroll's Through the Looking Glass. :)
They have a copy of the internet! A COPY! How much of that do you think is copyrighted?
"This is our groupthink, it doesn't need to make sense. Now shut up and conform so you get your mod points!"
Everybody who says something along the lines of "bah, chinese complaining about stealing" should note that all Chinese are not connected into one single conscious entity, but are different individuals.
The people who own this IP need not have stolen any other IP.
It is as dumb as saying that all Americans are christian, guntouting, fat fuckasses.
This confirms it: meta-discussion of Slashdot makes for karma whoring. Now, can I recurse again and have that be the case?
Just fucking google it ;)
Chinese is a complex language to write. It doesn't use an alphabet (like most western languages). It doesn't even use syllables (like, for example, 2 of the Japanese writing system), it uses logographs : in an over-simplified way, we can say they use 1 symbol for every different word/idea/etc.
This makes thousands of different symbols (According to wikipedia : a little less than 50k variants in the Kangxi dictionary).
This ISN'T something you can put on a regular occidental 107 keys keyboard.
Therefor you have several solutions :
- Custom keyboards :
Use special keyboards where the most frequently couple of thousand of symbols are present.
Not very practical (symbols harder to find compared to looking for a letter on a 107 keyboard). Wikipedia has a picture.
- By shape of characters :
Either by handwriting recognition, or by decomposing charachters (the different strokes) and putting them on a regular keyboard layout.
- By sound of words :
Either by using something like Zhuyin which is system that was invented to help teaching chinese. It has 31 symbols, 1 for each consonant or vowel in chinese. As such, it can be used for other purposes, like putting it on a keyboard : the person type the sound and the software guess the corresponding word/logogram.
Or an alternative method is the Pinyin : it uses latin letters to write the sound. (And thus is interesting for computers on which latin keyboards are widespread).
The mapping of sound to logographs isn't completely straightforward, for example Chinese is a tonal language, but some system don't require the writer to specify tones using marks. Some software work is required. And this software isn't infallible.
Google released such a software. User can phonetically type Chinese on any occidental keyboard using (tone-less) pinyin, and the software tries to convert it to actual Chinese characters.
This software produce the same correct results as another popular one. (Hopefully. If the google soft didn't give the correct results, there would be problems. I wouldn't be a functional pinyin input system).
Sometime, the software hesitates and give a choice of possibilities. Most of the time, the same as the concurrent (Possibly explained by the fact that both softwares have to process the same user input, using the same pronunciation system that isn't unambiguous).
But, sometime the Google soft is plain wrong, and produces the same errors as the concurrent. And THIS is suspicious, because maybe some part of the software uses piece from the concurrent (part of the algorithm ? statistical data ?)
The company is suing googles on the grounds that if both softwares behave the same down to the bugs, maybe some part could have been illegally copied.
Meanwhile, adepts of Google Seppuku rejoiced world wide a cheap and easy to find software that could also be used to produce random chinese caracter to be subsequently imported into Google as Kanji.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
It is Chinese stealing from other Chinese. Not really surprising since they have no qualm stealing from any company and then trying to claim it for their own work.
It also partially why you do not want to use china to do any IP type work. They will steal from others and leave your company at risk, as well as allow other chinese companies to steal from yours.
Understand that this is simply a big part of who they are now. They have been taught for the last 60 years that all the property belongs to the state and the community. It will be difficult for them to consider private ownership of anything for a number of generations. I am guessing that it will end about the time that China considers itself a superpower (which will happen). Sadly, that may be when a war occurs with between either China and (America|Russia|Europe|India). Offhand, I am guessing Russia. They will need a number of their resources (land, water, oil, etc).
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Google has learned how to do business in China.
Congrats to them.
Plagiarism has been confirmed officially by Google, Sohu and IDG news reporter Sumner Lemon.
t e-google-admits-word-database.html
- to-google-take-down.html
Google admits word database came from third party - Network World
http://www.networkworld.com/news/2007/040907-upda
An earlier report by the same reporter: Sohu to Google: Take down copycat software
http://www.networkworld.com/news/2007/040707-sohu
Google China's Official Apology to Sohu.com (in Chinese)
http://googlechinablog.com/2007/04/blog-post.html