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Google responds to the Mocality blog post

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Re: Google responds to the Mocality blog post

#71

Post by zobzu »

The point here is not if Google is evil or not. Obviously, the heads of Google weren't aware of this scam.

The point is that any employee of Google can access such data. And Google holds a lot of data. A real damn lot of data. Moreover, it sounds like it was much more than a lone employee scamming people. It was probably a small organized group.

It means you data, and sometimes your business isn't always safe.

Thus, Google is dangerous. It's not Google's fault. It's just what happens when you get too big or too large.

Re: Google responds to the Mocality blog post

#72

Post by methodin »

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.

You clearly have never worked with an outsourced team. Shit like this can happen with the utmost of ease - unless Google has an internal time constantly involved in the actual area of the outsourced team.

Re: Google responds to the Mocality blog post

#73

Post by pbhjpbhj »

jrockway wrote: post #67
pbhjpbhj wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It doesn't bother you if Google, the company, is committing crimes? The cost of innovation isn't becoming a crook.

No, some regular person at Google behaved unethically. If Google locked down their employees enough to prevent this (which I doubt is even possible), then they wouldn't be able to do anything good either. You're saying: one mistake in a tiny branch office, entire global company goes out of business.

>You're saying: one mistake in a tiny branch office, entire global company goes out of business.

Nope I'm trying to temper your outlandish general statements; and failing.

napierzaza said, roughly, it was Googles fault if they hired criminals and those people were acting criminally either through lack of oversight or otherwise. You said something along the lines of it being expected that Google would commit crimes and that this is merely the cost of innovation. I asked if Google inc. acting criminally bothered you and you appeared to answer that it didn't that it was impossible for them to do good without also committing 'evil'.

TBH I can't really believe anyone who values the rule of law (particular its equal application) could countenance such a position. So, do you believe that rich corporations should be immune from the laws that bind the rest of us?

Hypothetical: If an employee in McDonald's overcharges all the customers do you think that McDonald's/the franchisee is completely devoid of responsibility because it was "just an employee"?

Re: Google responds to the Mocality blog post

#74

Post by Tichy »

kenjackson wrote: post #61
Tichy wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The notion that Google needs to scam some African directory service for profit just seems ridiculous. For real, right? Next thing they'll tell us is that Google would assist companies in displaying illegal drug ads in the US for profit. This is Google we're talking about. Have people already forgotten their motto is "Don't be evil"? You can't have that motto and do evil stuff -- it wouldn't be consistent.

I don't know about that story, in any case putting illegal ads on your public web site seems a weird way to make money. Wouldn't it be rather easy to find you and sue you? I am sure the police knows where Google Headquarters are??

Re: Google responds to the Mocality blog post

#76

Post by potatolicious »

jrockway wrote: post #67
pbhjpbhj wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It doesn't bother you if Google, the company, is committing crimes? The cost of innovation isn't becoming a crook.

No, some regular person at Google behaved unethically. If Google locked down their employees enough to prevent this (which I doubt is even possible), then they wouldn't be able to do anything good either. You're saying: one mistake in a tiny branch office, entire global company goes out of business.

> " You're saying: one mistake in a tiny branch office, entire global company goes out of business."

I don't see that anywhere in the posts above.

I can't speak for other posters, but the price of letting your employees have the freedom to act according to their own initiative is that sometimes, people will fuck up, and the damage may not just be contained to your own company.

Of course, giving employees freedom also means more innovation, fast progress, and generally more happiness.

So the idea is that Google can't just reap the benefits of high-employee-freedom, they also need to bear the responsibilities for the inevitable damage it causes. These employees, acting on behalf of Google, did something bad, and caused real, quantifiable damage to another business - Google needs to take responsibility for this, and I don't just mean a mea culpa on a blog.

Re: Google responds to the Mocality blog post

#77

Post by eternalban »

peterwwillis wrote: post #22

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 think Joshua Mwaniki made an error in relegating the transcripts of the phone calls to the "technicalities" section.

If I were him, I would update that post and put the links to the transcripts in the "conclusions" section.

Re: Google responds to the Mocality blog post

#78

Post by gldalmaso »

Steko wrote: post #68
acqq wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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?

I just had a hard time coming to grips with the idea of a billionaire company committing outright fraud for ten dollar domain names. The fraudsters may well have been Google employees and/or contractors. I think Willful at metafilter put it best [1]: I worked at Google for a few years. My experience is that it's like any other huge multinational corporation in that there are regional teams that get more or less super…

Google deals in information. It handles information from internet content and internet users world-wide, yet it doesn't have enough internal information as to let a team go rampant like this for months.

Even if they outsourced it, I can't believe Google would just black-box the process and simply expect 'x' result from the outsource company, that's just an endorsement of shady activity.

Re: Google responds to the Mocality blog post

#79

Post by Flenser »

zobzu wrote: post #71

The point here is not if Google is evil or not. Obviously, the heads of Google weren't aware of this scam. The point is that any employee of Google can access such data. And Google holds a lot of data. A real damn lot of data. Moreover, it sounds like it was much more than a lone employee scamming people. It was probably a small organized group. It means you data, and sometimes your business isn't always safe. Thus,…

* The point is that any employee of Google can access such data.*

It sounds like they were just visiting Mocality's website. Anyone could have done that.

Re: Google responds to the Mocality blog post

#80

Post by gabaix »

michaelcampbell wrote: post #29
badclient wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> 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.

Why is this downvoted? His point is valid, even if you disagree with it.
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