Anyone who works on a computer in Chinese knows that what tool you use to handle Chinese input can make a huge difference. A good one makes entering Chinese characters fast and relatively painless. A bad one makes it a roaring headache. Windows and Apple's OS X both have built-in language tools for Chinese input, but there are plenty of third-party tools available as well. Here in China, Google has just launched its own Chinese input tool. Predictably, it's made this a bit "Googly".

Tools for typing languages that don't use the Roman alphabet (the one you're reading right now) are called "input method editors" or "IMEs". For working in Asian languages on modern computers they are essential. IMEs enable you to use a regular QWERTY keyboard to input a romanization of the language you are using--Hanyu Pinyin for Chinese, for example--and then they will use a combination of phonetics and predictions to guess the appropriate characters. A good system is very good at using the context of a sentence or surrounding words to predict the right characters. A bad one isn't, and you spend a lot of time correcting or manually choosing the right words.

The built-in IME for Windows is strictly adequate. The built-in one for OS X, and I speak from experience, is pretty useless. Plenty of other options are out there, but you have to pay for many of the really good ones. Good Chinese IMEs often come bundled with dictionary software or translation tools that let you see pinyin or translation for Chinese documents.

Google's tool is strictly an IME, and it's integrated with the Chinese Google Desktop product. Unfortunately, it's still PC only, so I can't test it directly. A report from the Xinhua news service gave Google's IME pretty high marks. It's actually a fairly clever move. In China, Google continues to get savaged in for share of searches by local heavyweight Baidu. Including a good IME in the Google Desktop might help to persuade more Chinese computer users to give Google Desktop a try and, hopefully, use Google or Google.cn for their searches.

The Googly part of Google's IME is the online component. Many IMEs will allow you to create custom dictionaries for words or phrases that are not automatically recognized (a must for ever-shifting Net slang). Google's IME will link to your GMail account and enable you to keep your custom dictionary online so you can access it from any computer you are working on.

If, that is, it has the Google IME installed on it.

In a country where many young people still get their Internet access via Internet cafes, this is a pretty good idea. The problem now will be getting Internet cafe owners to install the Google IME and toolbar onto all of their computers. We'll see how that goes.

Of course, lurking in the back of my mind is the knowledge that Google is always looking for ways to better target advertising. I wonder if and how the IME fits into that picture, in addition to providing an incentive to use the Google toolbar.

The Google IME is available here (in Chinese).

For more thoughts on the Google IME and a discussion of IMEs for Apple OS X, see this post from Brendan O'Kane (inaccessible as of this writing, but may be back online when you try).