Court orders search engine to stop hijacking rival's traffic

Chinese court punishes Sogou for repeatedly redirecting users away from Baidu using its keyboard app

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Sogou Keyboard allows users to type in pinyin, and allows for real time translation and foreign language input. (Picture: Sogou/Apple)

Published: 8:23pm, 24 Oct 2018Updated: 8:43am, 20 Sep 2019

This article originally appeared on ABACUS

We all have our favorite search engine, but what if the results you get from it are actually from a rival site?

It sounds bizarre, but it happened in China. This week Sogou, a search provider whose name means “search dog”, was ordered by a Beijing court to pay a US$72,000 fine for failing to stop redirecting searches on Baidu to its own website.

So how did that work? Turns out, it has to do with Sogou’s keyboard app (called, you guessed it, Sogou Keyboard). The app lets users type Chinese characters by spelling them out by their sound, using the Latin alphabet -- a widely-used system known as pinyin.

Baidu claimed that when you type in Baidu’s search box using Sogou Keyboard, a drop-down menu appears, showing related keywords. Clicking any of them brings you to Sogou’s search results page instead of Baidu’s -- despite the fact that you’re trying to search on Baidu.

It’s not a new thing either. The case goes back to 2014, and Sogou lost their appeal in May this year. The court ruled that people should have the right to use any search engine that they choose, and Sogou should provide services honestly.