Google received a request from rival Chinese internet company Sohu that Google stop using software copied from Sohu, reports InfoWorld, and Reuters reports that Google has now apologized to Sohu, saying an early release of the software had used non-Google data.
The software in question allows for easy typing of Chinese characters, taking takes what a person has typed in latin characters and suggesting possible matches in Chinese. It makes those suggestions based in large part on a database, which Sohu.com says Google is using for its own Pinyim IME software.

Sohu.com says it discovered the issue shortly after Google announced the software was available for download. Google's software contains the same sort of errors as Sohu's. It even contains Sohu.com engineers' names that were manually inserted by those engineers.

Google later announced it had upgraded its software and issued the apology to Sohu.