Google responds to the Mocality blog post • Hacker News Board

Re: Google responds to the Mocality blog post

#51

Post by VMG » Fri, Jan 13, 2012, 11:24 PM UTC

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.

I find it very hard to believe that anyone significant knew about this at Google. Do you really think that they are in such dire straits that they have to scam Africans for profit?

Re: Google responds to the Mocality blog post

#52

Post by tripzilch » Fri, Jan 13, 2012, 11:24 PM UTC

michaelcampbell wrote: post #44

badclient wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Following the same reasoning we shouldn't laud Google for all the great stuff they did either, like GMail, Search, etc.

Sorry it's one or the other.

I know I like to say, we're IT and if anything goes wrong it's not our fault, but if anything goes extremely well, we'll take the credit--but then I know I'm being facetious :)

Re: Google responds to the Mocality blog post

#53

Post by tripzilch » Fri, Jan 13, 2012, 11:28 PM UTC

VMG wrote: post #51

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.

I find it very hard to believe that anyone significant knew about this at Google. Do you really think that they are in such dire straits that they have to scam Africans for profit?

It went on for months, even if they outsourced a team that just happened to interpret its orders "creatively", having such a scam operate under your watch, while you're paying them, is--to put it mildy--quite the oversight.

Re: Google responds to the Mocality blog post

#54

Post by tripzilch » Fri, Jan 13, 2012, 11:30 PM UTC

peterb wrote: post #4

He chose his words carefully. He didn't say this was done by Google employees, but "a team of people" working on a Google project. Google is usually straight-forward when they screw up. I'm curious to see what actually happened.

Except it went on for months, even if they outsourced a team that just happened to interpret its orders "creatively", having such a scam operate under your watch, while you're paying them, is--to put it mildy--quite the oversight.

Re: Google responds to the Mocality blog post

#55

Post by tripzilch » Fri, Jan 13, 2012, 11:33 PM UTC

rdouble wrote: post #24

kenjackson wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

The problem runs deeper. Google hired a lot of creeps during their huge hiring sprees in the mid/late 2000s. Don't forget that Google has been the #1 job choice for MBA grads since around 2006. Their semi autistic hiring process gets people with high IQs but does nothing to weed out amoral weirdos or even just plain assholes. One reason I have never responded to their recruitment efforts is that every psycho I've wor…

That would explain a lot, indeed.

Re: Google responds to the Mocality blog post

#56

Post by Tichy » Fri, Jan 13, 2012, 11:42 PM UTC

acqq wrote: post #43

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 loca…

Is it? At the most some team inside went rampant and will probably be fired. Aren't there bound to be some black sheep in any organization with 1000s of members?

The notion that Google needs to scam some African directory service for profit just seems ridiculous.

Re: Google responds to the Mocality blog post

#57

Post by aidenn0 » Fri, Jan 13, 2012, 11:50 PM UTC

With a large company things like this need to be addressed; a lot of time the incentives are perverse to set this up. Consider WalMart. I am 99% certain that no execs there say "make your employees work off the clock" but they definitely have incentives for managers to get more work done with the same payroll, which translates to an incentive to engage in illegal behavior.

Re: Google responds to the Mocality blog post

#58

Post by pbhjpbhj » Fri, Jan 13, 2012, 11:56 PM UTC

jrockway wrote: post #42

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.

Thing is that Google (and those like them) bring a lot of revenue to boost your GDP.

Picking up a cell-phone left in a bar shouldn't get a whole platoon of police officers mobilised either (eg http://www.pcworld.com/article/195006/police_seize_gizmodo_e...).

Aside: the downvoting of unpopular but nonetheless cogent and well put arguments here is getting rather silly; will pg step in to sort this out. IMO this has got worse and worse since comment scores were hidden.

Re: Google responds to the Mocality blog post

#59

Post by icandoitbetter » Fri, Jan 13, 2012, 11:56 PM UTC

AznHisoka wrote: post #19

brudgers wrote: post #13

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?

Not the same thing at all. Google claimed to represent Mocality - AirBnB did not claim to represent Craigslist.

Re: Google responds to the Mocality blog post

#60

Post by mbell » Fri, Jan 13, 2012, 11:57 PM UTC

tripzilch wrote: post #53

VMG wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find it very hard to believe that anyone significant knew about this at Google. Do you really think that they are in such dire straits that they have to scam Africans for profit?

It went on for months , even if they outsourced a team that just happened to interpret its orders "creatively", having such a scam operate under your watch, while you're paying them, is--to put it mildy--quite the oversight.

>It went on for months

Months is an incredibly short period of time for a large organization. Especially when considering a small, probably low priority group. A large organization isn't like a startup, for a small low priority group the feedback loop isn't daily, its at best weekly and quite possibly longer even monthly (and gets longer as you go up the corporate ladder). What you may identify about a groups activities in a couple weeks at a small company can easily take months in a large company.