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Google responds to the Mocality blog post

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Re: Google responds to the Mocality blog post

#41

Post by y0ghur7_xxx »

ZeroMinx wrote: post #40
pork wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's a bit disingenuous to equate some Google employees from doing this with Google as a company doing it. Um...no, it's not disingenuous at all .

Um...yes, it is. Take any 10k+ employee company, can you as a company guarantee that no employer will "do no evil"? That's impossible. I'm not trying to defend Google here, but just saying that an act made by an employee at a company is equal to a given strategy by the same company is just ludicrous.

The scam was going on for months. It's not something that some employee did without telling anyone, hidden away in some office. You can't possibly contact all those businesses during work hours at google without some boss asking you what you are working on and what you are doing. And if that is possible inside google, imho something is very wrong.

Re: Google responds to the Mocality blog post

#42

Post by jrockway »

Aloisius wrote: post #38

Uh, wasn't this fraud? And isn't that criminal? As in jail time not just being fired? If I said I had a fake partnership with Google and started calling up their customers for my competing website, I'm pretty certain I would go to jail.

I'm pretty certain I would go to jail.

I'll take the other side of that bet. Do you know how much money it costs to send someone to prison? Quite a lot. And that doesn't include how much it costs to keep them there.

Re: Google responds to the Mocality blog post

#43

Post by acqq »

So Nelson Mattos (http://investing.businessweek.com/research/stocks/people/per...) confirms that what Mocality diagnosed is correct:

- there are people inside of Google, working for Google, that manually accessed web data of Mocality and then phoned Mocality clients making fraudulent claims about Mocality and practically trying to extort the money from the clients. Note that those in Google can't be "just some local Kenyans" as Mocality recored systematic access from Google India after access from Kenya stopped:

http://blog.mocality.co.ke/files/2012/01/both.png

Note also what Mocality logged:

- "8 different user agents mostly running Chrome on Linux"

It's so cries "Google" and it can be much more than eight people doing this, as, for example, all machines where hard disks are duplicated or are simply similarly configured would have the same user agent.

Mocality also estimates that

- "this team were calling 20-25 Mocality business per hour" (http://blog.mocality.co.ke/2012/01/13/google-what-were-you-t...)

This is SOO BIG.

Re: Google responds to the Mocality blog post

#44

Post by michaelcampbell »

badclient wrote: post #33
michaelcampbell wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Google was basically phishing by pretending that they were partnered with Mocality. 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.

When an engineer at google comes up with a great idea during work hours not sanctioned by google, google still owns that idea and its success. Not the individual. Same should apply when shit goes bad.

Taking responsibility for something stupid your employees do, sure. Equating that stupid thing with a sanctioned corporate action is ridiculous.

Re: Google responds to the Mocality blog post

#45

Post by jrockway »

napierzaza wrote: post #39
potatolicious wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except, Google has already admitted this was theirs. Perhaps rogue employees within Google, but definitely not an unrelated third party.

Yes, but I don't think they can spin it as a "rogue team" really. If it is a team inside Google. That's Google's fault. It doesn't matter whether it's Google's fault because they have poor oversight or too much freedom or because they hire people who are criminal.

Google is not 100% perfect. If things aren't broken, you're not trying hard enough to push the envelope. The cost of innovation is failure.

In other words, this doesn't surprise me. And it doesn't bother me, either.

Re: Google responds to the Mocality blog post

#46

Post by michaelcampbell »

y0ghur7_xxx wrote: post #41
ZeroMinx wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Um...yes, it is. Take any 10k+ employee company, can you as a company guarantee that no employer will "do no evil"? That's impossible. I'm not trying to defend Google here, but just saying that an act made by an employee at a company is equal to a given strategy by the same company is just ludicrous.

The scam was going on for months. It's not something that some employee did without telling anyone, hidden away in some office. You can't possibly contact all those businesses during work hours at google without some boss asking you what you are working on and what you are doing. And if that is possible inside google, imho something is very wrong.

> It's not something that some employee did without telling anyone, hidden away in some office.

Awesome; since you seem to have more facts than anyone else in this emotion-laden thread, please lay them out for us. Perhaps you're right; I simply don't know, but since you seem to have evidence of this, I'm sure Google legal would love to see it.

Re: Google responds to the Mocality blog post

#47

Post by jnbiche »

leak wrote: post #18
alphadog wrote: post #3

So what happens next? Realistically I don't think there's any legal action they can take - can they? Also, how does Google "make this right" with them?

As far as legal action, Google employees violated Mocality 's Terms & Condition so maybe legal action is possible.

And they (or whoever was making those phone calls) fraudulently misrepresented themselves, thereby committing fraud by the laws of the US. Not sure about Kenyan laws.

Re: Google responds to the Mocality blog post

#48

Post by rwolf »

brudgers wrote: post #7

> "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…

"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."

I believe there is an important difference between indexing Mocality's content and the things that Mocality is upset about. I believe is is reasonable to expect Google not to call your customers and pretend to represent a join venture, lie about your offering to them, and to pressure them into buying something.

For one thing, that doesn't sound like a very scalable crime model.

Re: Google responds to the Mocality blog post

#49

Post by acqq »

Steko wrote: post #11
potatolicious wrote: post #6

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…

> I have confidence that Google employees were not involved with the fraud aspects of what occurred here

How come, when Google India was obviously involved, looking at the post that you link as well?

Re: Google responds to the Mocality blog post

#50

Post by y0ghur7_xxx »

michaelcampbell wrote: post #46
y0ghur7_xxx wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The scam was going on for months. It's not something that some employee did without telling anyone, hidden away in some office. You can't possibly contact all those businesses during work hours at google without some boss asking you what you are working on and what you are doing. And if that is possible inside google, imho something is very wrong.

> It's not something that some employee did without telling anyone, hidden away in some office. Awesome; since you seem to have more facts than anyone else in this emotion-laden thread, please lay them out for us. Perhaps you're right; I simply don't know, but since you seem to have evidence of this, I'm sure Google legal would love to see it.

> since you seem to have more facts than anyone

I don't. I just repeated what Nelson Mattos wrote on his blog.

"a team of people working on a Google project improperly used Mocality’s data and misrepresented our relationship with Mocality to encourage customers to create new websites."

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