Talking About IME

Different from the Lartin languages, typing Chinese on a computer requires an IME. Because there’s no Chinese word on the keyboard.

There’s a long history about Chinese IMEs but Sogou Pinyin was the 1st one who broke the rule and combined IME with Internet. After Sogou Pinyin, Google China relased Google Pinyin, as a competitive product.

The war of IME also started on mobile devices. However, now, Cloud may become the next battlefield.

Baidu’s IME for Search Box

Baidu’s Cloud Input is still in alpha version and only Baidu staff can access. Form the leaking out screenshots, Baidu’s new Cloud IME is an option in the Preference Settings page.

I think this can be an enhancement for Baidu’s Search. With this IME, Baidu can know better about what the user really want, especially for those lazy users who type pinyin directly in the search box. So far, there’s no idea about whether other products are taking advantage of Baidu’s cloud IME.

Tencent’s IME as a common tool

Comparing with Baidu’s new IME, the Tencent’s is more likely to be a cloud IME that can work on any web page which contains a input area.

What’s more, Tencent’s IME also works well on senior mobile devices.

While more and more client applications became web applications, IMEs followed the same trend. For cloud IMEs, only an interface is not enough, the power of data learning is more important for these IME service providers.

Yesterday, Sogou released an IME called “Sogou Cloud IME“. However, sogou innovatively took advantage of Javascript, and produced a IME that can run in browser. As it runs in browser, it becomes a cross-platform IME — All the operating systems with a browser, can use this cloud IME.

Sogou is the leader on Pinyin IME field since 2006. Google.cn has also released a pinyin IME short after Sogou Pinyin, but was found plagiarized Sogou Pinyin’s thesaurus. Sogou is a subsidiary of Sohu.com(NASDAQ:SOHU), and focuses on search engine. However, its IME is much better than its search engine.

Alipay is considered as  “The Paypal of China”, and processes over 1 billion RMB trading everyday . This sudden maintenance has also affected taobao. The users of taobao, are not able to pay for transactions they’ve created.

Alipay said it would be back in an hour, in its annoucement.

Today, with the release of Q3 financial report, Baidu (NASDAQ:BIDU) annouced that it will close the old bid ranking service, and migrate the customer to new system called “Feng Chao“. Feng Chao is a new marketing tool that developed by baidu, to replace the bid ranking service, it went public on Apirl 20th, 2009.

And the bid ranking service, which was the most profitable one, and which supported Baidu’s eight years of rapid growing, will be finally closed in December, 2009. However, Baidu has also lowered profit forecast in the financial report, which lead its share price drop.

“About 70% of our customers are now taking advantage with Feng Chao, so it’s the right time to migrate all customers to the new platform”, said Robin Li, CEO of Baidu. It is no less than a phoenix‘s nirvana of Baidu; and in Chinese, “Feng Chao” means “the nest of phoenix”.

Best wishes.