Google Pinyin IME ( zh, t=谷歌拼音輸入法, s=谷歌拼音输入法, p=Gǔgē Pīnyīn Shūrùfǎ) was an input method developed by Google China Labs. The tool was made publicly available on April 4, 2007. Aside from Pinyin input, it also includes stroke count method input. As of March 2019, Google Pinyin has been discontinued and the download page has been deleted. However, Google Pinyin IME can still be obtained from https://dl.google.com/pinyin/v2/GooglePinyinInstaller.exe ().

Availability

Windows

, Google Pinyin was available for

Windows XP Windows XP is a major release of Microsoft's Windows NT operating system. It was release to manufacturing, released to manufacturing on August 24, 2001, and later to retail on October 25, 2001. It is a direct upgrade to its predecessors, Wind ...

Windows Vista Windows Vista is a major release of the Windows NT operating system developed by Microsoft. It was the direct successor to Windows XP, which was released five years before, at the time being the longest time span between successive releases of ...

Windows 7 Windows 7 is a major release of the Windows NT operating system developed by Microsoft. It was Software release life cycle#Release to manufacturing (RTM), released to manufacturing on July 22, 2009, and became generally available on October 22, ...

Windows 8 Windows 8 is a major release of the Windows NT operating system developed by Microsoft. It was released to manufacturing on August 1, 2012; it was subsequently made available for download via MSDN and TechNet on August 15, 2012, and later to ...

& Windows 10 version 1511 or below. Both

32-bit In computer architecture, 32-bit computing refers to computer systems with a processor, memory, and other major system components that operate on data in 32- bit units. Compared to smaller bit widths, 32-bit computers can perform large calculati ...

and

64-bit In computer architecture, 64-bit integers, memory addresses, or other data units are those that are 64 bits wide. Also, 64-bit CPUs and ALUs are those that are based on processor registers, address buses, or data buses of that size. A ...

versions were available.

Android

Google released a Pinyin IME system for Android 1.5 or newer in March 2009. The Android Pinyin IME supports user dictionary synchronization with the desktop version.

Linux

By the end of 2008, more than 20% users of Google Pinyin wanted a Linux version of the input method, which was answered in the FAQ section with a general PR phrase "We always strive to provide a better user experience and we never stop our hard work to fulfill the customer needs". However, the Linux user community is porting the Android Google Pinyin IME to the non-Android Linux IME framework SCIM in th
scim-googlepinyin module
After Christmas 2009, the Google pinyin module for SCIM became also available for the Nokia Maemo 5 platform, which meant it could be downloaded to any

Nokia N900 The Nokia N900 is a smartphone made by Nokia. It supersedes the Nokia N810. Its default operating system, Maemo 5, is a Linux-based OS originally developed for the Nokia 770 Internet Tablet. It is the first Nokia device based upon the Texas ...

phone through the official application repositories.

Mac OS X

A closed beta version of Google Pinyin for Mac OS X was leaked on September 14, 2010. A public version was never made available.

Copyright infringement allegations

After Google Pinyin was initially released in April 2007, it was soon discovered that Google Pinyin's dictionary database contained employee names of

Sogou Pinyin Sogou Pinyin Method () is a popular Chinese Pinyin input method editor developed by Sohu.com, Inc. under its search engine brand name, Sogou. Sogou Pinyin is a dominant input software in China. By July 2011, Sogou Pinyin had an 83.6% penetrati ...

, an indication that the dictionary was taken from

Sogou Sogou, Inc. () is a Chinese technology company that offers a search engine. It is a subsidiary of Tencent. The offices of Sogou are located on the southeast corner of Tsinghua University in Beijing. Sogou also has offices in Chengdu co-locate ...

, one of Google's competitors in the Chinese Internet market. On April 8, 2007, Google admitted that they used "non-Google database resources". Shortly thereafter, a new version of Google Pinyin was released which no longer appeared to be based on Sogou's database.

Synchronization failure

Google Pinyin for Windows has been failing to synchronize for years because of the deprecation of Google ClientLogin authentication. A client with an alternative authentication method has not been announced yet. Google Pinyin for Android can still synchronize (within this platform only).

References

External links

Google Pinyin Website

Official Google Group
(Old)

{{Input method

Pinyin Hanyu Pinyin (), often shortened to just pinyin, is the official romanization system for Standard Mandarin Chinese in China, and to some extent, in Singapore and Malaysia. It is often used to teach Mandarin, normally written in Chinese fo ...

Han character input Freeware Windows text-related software Android (operating system) software Pinyin Han pinyin input