Discontinued Google Pinyin IME

Been using Google Pinyin IME in Windows for years. Love it or so use to its functionality (can type both simplified & traditional Chinese characters), compatibility (so far no system halt issue) and customisability (use your own established phases).

Thought it will be uneventful to install and set up Google Pinyin IME in my new Windows 7 x64 SP1, only to find out the same nagging "network error" message keep popping up whenever I try to logging with my Google account to retrieve my own established phrases data.

It seems Google has shut down or change the particular host for Pinyin IME synchronisation, as stated in Google Pinyin wiki under "synchronization failure". The official forum has been taken down, left the Chinese group staying stagnant.

Despite being unable to synchronise, the 64-bit version of the installation file is still available here (15.6MB). Well how I know? Guess it is provided even since the very beginning but the page has also been taken off.