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

Re:So...

[Timesprout]

'Mistake' is a bit euphamistic here. The dictionary was never made public yet Google somehow managed to accquire it. They have not complied with Sohu's requests to date. They dragged their feet over the whole issue and only came clean when there more than sufficient proof they were infringing.

Its not the first time Google have taken a fairly liberal interpretation of someone elses copyright either.

Re:So...

[Breakfast Pants]

Actually, when caught, they just removed the developer's names from the dictionary. When a big deal of it was made, *then* they went to town 'not doing evil'. They still haven't said how it happened; I bet they will quietly settle it, and we will never hear more.

Do no evil

[z-j-y]

Google is going to release a statement that stealing code/data is not evil in China, and Google must fit in local cultures and abide by local laws.

Seriously, this is just pathetic. I am appalled by the Google apologists on slashdot.

Chinese input is a well established market; Google Giant forces itself into the market with a product that is very similar to existing ones and offers no innovation. That is not evil enough? They did this by stealing data and who knows what from others. Mind you that the data is not publicly available, so Google must have committed certain crimes to obtain the data.

For those who don't see what's the big deal: the mapping from ASCII sequence to Chinese character/phrase is not trivial; actually it is what Chinese input is all about.

Re:Do no evil

[ShawnDoc]

This is a serious problem when dealing with Chinese companies. Now that Google has opened offices in China and has staffed them with native Chinese people, they're going to have a hard time enforcing western style ideas about copyright and what constitutes "doing no evil". Its a problem we've run into in the past with our Chinese operations. The way the problem was "solved", by removing the engineers names, but still clearly using the other company's engine (they didn't remove the identical bugs), is something I have seen happen in the past when dealing with our R&D team in China when we've found them using code they "borrowed" either from open source code or from an engineers past employer. I've never seen it handled in public like this however. Google is going to need to take some serious Q&A steps in their Chinese offices to keep stuff like this from happening again or else risk their Chinese office ruining the entire company's reputation.

Re:Time for a slogan change?

[LarsG]

This reminds me of Animal Farm and how the commandments on the barn wall changed.

The people outside looked from Google to MS, and from MS to Google, and from Google to MS again; but already it was impossible to say which was which.

On what do you base your judgment?

[Anonymous Coward]

> They have not complied with Sohu's requests to date.

One of Sohu's demands was to remove it. They did that, even prior to the cease & desist deadline, per the article. It sounds like they'll have to compensate Sohu next, which isn't overly surprising. As for where they got it, perhaps someone sold it to them? We don't know, so I'll reserve judgment about whether it was acquired in an un-Google "evil" way until we hear the rest of the story.

> It's not the first time Google have taken a fairly liberal interpretation of someone else's copyright either.

As for the copyright stance, I honestly don't care. Yes, I dislike Microsoft's hypocrisy concerning copyright, but I don't really give a damn about imaginary property at this point in time, and I don't see Google out there telling people that copyright infringement is evil, wrong, Communist and anti-American.

Frankly, I'm more inclined to distribute my works with only one request: that you do not acknowledge my authorship in any way. Of course, almost the only way to enforce that is to post AC :-)

Re:Any surprise this was done in China?

[BiggerIsBetter]

Google may be filled with the best engineers, but once you move out of North America, they know nothing about ethics or morality.

I'm curious how much time you've spent outside of North America, because I'm pretty sure 92% of the world population would disagree with you.

Right! Google is evil!

[SEE]

After all, we know that all Google employees are under Total Management Mind Control, and that Google Knows Everything Everyone's Doing. It's not even remotely possible that a handful of Google employees in China could shadily cut corners (using an already-extant database instead of compiling one from their own company's data) without Sergey Brin and Larry Page having personally authorized it from Mountain View, or that it would actually take a bit of time for upper management to investigate an issue when it's uncovered.