21–30 of 137 posts
The above url is a Google Plus post from a VP at Google ( http://www.linkedin.com/pub/nelson-mattos/4/703/430 )
Richard Champling...I couldnt hold back from commenting on your accusations that we may have ochestrated this deliberately. I head the Mocality team in Kenya...and we did not 'Ochestrate' this. Building a directory in Africa isnt as easy as just going around and knocking on doors. Our success was largely based on our ability to build and maintain a large agent network (15,000+ strong). These agents collect information that forms the bulk of our directory. However, for the agents...work isnt as simple as going around and knocking on doors. A lot of the population is still very suspicious about the internet and new technologies. People have fallen prey to scams for merely giving out their cell phone numbers...people are kidnapped etc.
Agents have the task of building trust with business owners in many cases just to extract their correct business details. Convincing them of the 'need' to be online, is not as easy as it seems. To facilitate this, the Mocality team in Kenya spends a lot of time travelling around, holding agent and business seminars and slowly turning our name and mission into something the local business person can trust. Therefore...when google launch a new product like KBO into the market, it is quite clear to us in the country, that they would have similar hurdles to climb when recruiting businesses. These hurdles are in some way a competitive advantage to us, as we've already spent tons of man hours going past them. Google would still need to build the trust...and the business owner would need to be comfortable working with them.
For Mocality, the businesses trust our agents and we use our agents to introduce products to them. Therefore, when google employees/agents call and say that we are working together, they are taking advantage of the relationship of trust we have worked so hard to build...in order to release their product easily into the market. How does this look for us? It's a domino effect... Our agents have no idea about the sites business owners call to ask them about, and their confusion makes the business owners suspicious about working with them further...the agents get upset with us for not informing them of new products or partnerships with google, as they are losing livelihoods...and we are left perplexed that a company of the stature like google is blatantly telling lies. Perhaps worse for us here are the allegations being made that we plan to charge Kshs 20,000 for some services...which is way more than an average business would be willing to spend. So...did we orchestrate this? we clearly did not. And as my CEO Stefan said in his blog...we have always been keen to form viable partnerships within Kenya, and google is a company we have looked at working with. So we dont understand why we werent asked about partnership possibilities if they really wanted to use our information. Really encouraged by the massive support we've seen online from so many people so far though. Very encouraging.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I take this to mean that they were Google contractors, or other representative third party. In any case, I feel like an apology is insufficient here - it sounds like what these guys have done has significantly harmed the reputation of Mocality, perhaps in an irreversible way. I'm not usually one to leap on the "payday from big company" bandwagon, but IMO Google needs to do more to make this right than simply apologiz…
Funny, I take this to mean that they aren't quite sure what happened yet. However, they are investigating and trying to figure out what happened, and trying to get out in front of this PR-wise.
> "We’re still investigating exactly how this happened, and as soon as we have all the facts, we’ll be taking the appropriate action with the people involved." Dear Google, Last I checked, you have been in the business of finding other people's digital information on the web, aggregating it, and offering it up as your product for more than a decade. For the past several years, your business model has increasingly rel…
I hope Google isn't that tone deaf. Jobs got a lot right, and one of them is at the VP-level you don't have excuses. The janitor can have excuses, but if this is under your watch -- it's under your watch. I felt like Google played dumb with the drug ads thing and didn't really hold people accountable (Page was hardly rebuked) -- here they need to come down hard to show that they're serious about "Don't be evil" -- or…
A comment on the G+ post from Joshua Mwaniki: Richard Champling...I couldnt hold back from commenting on your accusations that we may have ochestrated this deliberately. I head the Mocality team in Kenya...and we did not 'Ochestrate' this. Building a directory in Africa isnt as easy as just going around and knocking on doors. Our success was largely based on our ability to build and maintain a large agent network (15…
Isn't that what a phishing scam is? I lie and tell hotmail customers, for example, that I am from hotmail or somehow partnered with hotmail and that I need your password(or credit card). That's almost criminal.
http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?sclient=psy-ab&...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Mocality's post didn't have the hallmarks of linkbait and based on their description of their business model (patient, capitalized, appropriate to the local) and the sophistication of their honeypot strategy, there was an air of legitimacy. It was hard to see an upside from them making a false claim - e.g. a flood of unique visitors from around the world would hardly add value to their business (probably more likely…
This also reminds me of what AirBnB did with CraigsList. You're right - it's done everyday. And let's face it... will anyone remember a month from now?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I take this to mean that they were Google contractors, or other representative third party. In any case, I feel like an apology is insufficient here - it sounds like what these guys have done has significantly harmed the reputation of Mocality, perhaps in an irreversible way. I'm not usually one to leap on the "payday from big company" bandwagon, but IMO Google needs to do more to make this right than simply apologiz…
"I take this to mean that they were Google contractors, or other representative third party." That's what he wants you to take it to mean but that's likely not accurate. If no Google employees were involved I'd expect a quote that said so and this doesn't. I have confidence that Google employees were not involved with the fraud aspects of what occurred here but that's not the same thing as saying that this project wa…
A comment on the G+ post from Joshua Mwaniki: Richard Champling...I couldnt hold back from commenting on your accusations that we may have ochestrated this deliberately. I head the Mocality team in Kenya...and we did not 'Ochestrate' this. Building a directory in Africa isnt as easy as just going around and knocking on doors. Our success was largely based on our ability to build and maintain a large agent network (15…
I am not sure why he even needs two paragraphs before coming to the point: Google was basically phishing by pretending that they were partnered with Mocality. Isn't that what a phishing scam is? I lie and tell hotmail customers, for example, that I am from hotmail or somehow partnered with hotmail and that I need your password(or credit card). That's almost criminal.
It's a bit disingenuous to equate some Google employees from doing this with Google as a company doing it. I could be very wrong here (and would be extraordinarily disappointed in the company if so), but I doubt this was a corporate-sanctioned activity.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
This also reminds me of what AirBnB did with CraigsList. You're right - it's done everyday. And let's face it... will anyone remember a month from now?
AznHisoka: What did AirBnB do with CraigsList?
http://venturebeat.com/2011/06/02/airbnb-admits-gaming-craig...