Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Google responds to the Mocality blog post

plus.google.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

101–110 of 137 posts

Re: Google responds to the Mocality blog post

#101

Post by mvgoogler »

potatolicious wrote: post #84
jrockway wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What should they do?

Well, hard to say seeing as how the jury's still out on exactly what happened. If it was a rogue team in Google, there are a few things that come to mind: - Google needs to refund all customers they acquired via this process and alert them that they were duped. - Google needs to call every single business that the rogue team called and inform of what happened, and that Google is not affiliated with Mocality in any wa…

"A blanket apology and correction, on a site that the vast majority of these businesses will never read, is simply a cop out and wholly insufficient."

What about the original post gave you the impression that the blog post was the end of things? How about giving the people who are dealing with this a reasonable amount of time do handle it?

Re: Google responds to the Mocality blog post

#102

Post by [deleted] »

Eliezer wrote: post #70
kenjackson wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

You seem to have good and evil confused. Speaking as someone who's just ordered a number of meds online, helping me find the meds I need is "good". Trying to hinder this activity and censor it for stupid damn reasons is "bad".

[deleted]

Re: Google responds to the Mocality blog post

#103

Post by maratd »

gabaix wrote: post #80
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.

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

No, it is not a valid point. A company must take responsibility for its employees or contractors. It hired them. It is responsible for them. It must be held accountable for them. Why? Because a company is its employees. And yes, a few rotten apples will spoil the party. You judge a company by its worst employees, not its best. That's the way you judge any group. That's why a group worth admiring has the highest standard for membership and mercilessly purges its ranks of bad apples.

Re: Google responds to the Mocality blog post

#104

Post by codeonfire »

This G+ post is a PR blunder. You should never apologize for something and then say that you are still gathering the facts about it. Second, you don't offer to sacrifice other people (while not yet having the facts). You either don't or you self sacrifice. Third, telling the public about an apology to someone else seems desperate. Just apologize. If there is actual public fervor, wait a few days and, like things your dog ate, news of the apology will come out from the other end. Finally, if you're a business with lots of money that other people want, it's probably best not to say anything. Get your lawyer to say it. That is what they are paid for.

And Google is evil. they track everything you do online, where your phone goes, and what you search for and sell that information, for fuck's sake.

Re: Google responds to the Mocality blog post

#105

Post by myko »

maratd wrote: post #103
gabaix wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

No, it is not a valid point. A company must take responsibility for its employees or contractors. It hired them. It is responsible for them. It must be held accountable for them. Why? Because a company is its employees. And yes, a few rotten apples will spoil the party. You judge a company by its worst employees, not its best. That's the way you judge any group. That's why a group worth admiring has the highest stand…

No one is saying Google should not take responsibility - they should, and appear to be. Continue being angry at Google as a whole about this incident if they try to sweep it under the rug and do not get rid of those responsible.

Re: Google responds to the Mocality blog post

#106

Post by myko »

codeonfire wrote: post #104

This G+ post is a PR blunder. You should never apologize for something and then say that you are still gathering the facts about it. Second, you don't offer to sacrifice other people (while not yet having the facts). You either don't or you self sacrifice. Third, telling the public about an apology to someone else seems desperate. Just apologize. If there is actual public fervor, wait a few days and, like things your…

Damned if you do, damned you don't - had they not mentioned it people would be pissed that they're so brazen as to think they can do something like this and just get away with it. As it is I like Google's personable way of taking early responsibility, even without all the details, just to let the concerned public know that they are aware of the issue and taking it seriously.

Re: Google responds to the Mocality blog post

#107

Post by okal »

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…

So presumably, Kenyans have neither normal standards of ethics nor acceptable backgrounds? Like most other posters speaking in favour of Google, Willful displays an arrogance I can't quite understand. I'd be really curious about what you'd have to say if this was some American (or other "acceptable background") startup.

Re: Google responds to the Mocality blog post

#108

Post by jonhendry »

Tichy wrote: post #56
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.

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

If the Google people involved were tasked with developing Google's business in Africa, it's not ridiculous at all.

Re: Google responds to the Mocality blog post

#109

Post by potatolicious »

mvgoogler wrote: post #101
potatolicious wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, hard to say seeing as how the jury's still out on exactly what happened. If it was a rogue team in Google, there are a few things that come to mind: - Google needs to refund all customers they acquired via this process and alert them that they were duped. - Google needs to call every single business that the rogue team called and inform of what happened, and that Google is not affiliated with Mocality in any wa…

"A blanket apology and correction, on a site that the vast majority of these businesses will never read, is simply a cop out and wholly insufficient." What about the original post gave you the impression that the blog post was the end of things? How about giving the people who are dealing with this a reasonable amount of time do handle it?

You're reading way more into my post than I intended. Like I said, the jury's still out on what precisely happened, it's doubtful Google has yet figured out just what exactly occurred.

My post was responding to jrockway, who seemed to suggest that, because employee freedom leads to innovation and Good Things(tm), that people should simply let things like this slide with an apology, and chalk it up to a price of innovation. That's a load of crap. Real, provable damages needs to be corrected where possible, and compensated where it isn't.

He also didn't seem to be able to imagine any form of remedial action more than apologizing and disciplinary action - as if the real damage caused to another business is but a detail, or something hopelessly unfixable - neither of which are true.

tl;dr: Google probably (probably) is going to make this right, especially with this much flak directed at them. If jrockway was in charge of Google, though, I wouldn't expect the same.

Post reply on HN