It didn’t look good – Google released a new tool in China last week, and the thing bore an uncanny resemblance to a competitor’s product. Now it’s definitely bad – Google has admitted that, because it used “some non-Google database resources,” some of Sohu’s technology may have been recycled.
According to Reuters, the American search engine company is now working on damage control. “We are willing to face this issue of ours,” Google said in a statement. “While we apologize for the inconvenience this may have incurred to users and Sohu, we have also adopted immediate actions.”
“Immediate” may not have been fast enough, however – in fact, the search engine giant’s actions didn’t seem immediate at all to some onlookers. “Google refused to confirm or deny that they had used Sohu’s database,” reported iTWire’s Alex Zaharov-Reutt. And Sohu is still waiting on an official apology – that “database resources” stuff just doesn’t count.
Google wants everyone to know that it has addressed the issue, however, regardless of any subjective references to time. “[W]e have completed the second comprehensive upgrade (version 17 of beta 1.0) of the Gu Ge pinyin input system,” a company statement declared. “The new dictionary is now based on tens of thousands of entries Google’s enormous search database has accumulated over the years.”
Just the same, the search engine giant is lucky that this incident took place in China – the scrutiny would, to be honest, probably be a lot more intense had this all occurred within American borders.
