Google Admits to Using Sohu Database

prostoalex writes "A few days ago a Chinese company, Sohu.com, alleged Google improperly tapped its database for its Pinyin IME product, stirring controversy on whether two databases were similar just due to normal research process. Today Google admitted that its new product for Chinese market 'was built leveraging some non-Google database resources.' 'The dictionaries used with both software from Google and Sohu shared several common mistakes, where Chinese characters were matched with the wrong Pinyin equivalents. In addition, both dictionaries listed the names of engineers who had developed Sohu's Sogou Pinyin IME.'"

Comments

Dictionary mistakes.

[Tackhead]

> Today Google admitted that its new product for Chinese market 'was built leveraging some non-Google database resources.' The dictionaries used with both software from Google and Sohu shared several common mistakes, where Chinese characters were matched with the wrong Pinyin equivalents.

...including the ones for "plagiarize", "research", and apparently a new one for the 2000s under "leverage".

Leverage! Leverage!
Let no one else's work cut short your edge,
Against the truth you can surely hedge,
So don't cut short your edge,
But leverage, leverage, leverage!

(One man deserves the credit! One man deserves the blame!
And Sergei Brin Ivanovich Lobachevsky is his name!)

Google's initial explanation

[Anonymous Coward]

"In the future, Google invents a time machine that's used by a rogue employee to travel back in time to give Sohu this database. It's clear then that Sohu stole our database."

Time for a slogan change?

[GFree]

"Do no evil"

should be changed to

"Do just a tiny bit of evil"

which at this rate will probably end up as

"All your web are belong to us"

Ironic

[smackt4rd]

So now american companies are pirating chinese software? Oh the irony! :)

Oblig futurama quote

[pedantic bore]

"The internet is about the free exchange of other people's ideas!"