

Google responds to the Mocality blog post - thehodge
https://plus.google.com/u/0/115264064268941645500/posts/WfALKwfmCGJ

======
acqq
So Nelson Mattos
([http://investing.businessweek.com/research/stocks/people/per...](http://investing.businessweek.com/research/stocks/people/person.asp?personId=21751034&ticker=GOOG:US))
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...](http://blog.mocality.co.ke/2012/01/13/google-what-were-you-
thinking/))

This is SOO BIG.

~~~
Tichy
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.

~~~
kenjackson
_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.

~~~
Eliezer
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".

------
brudgers
> _"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 relied upon encouraging web users to add more content
to the web - Google+ upon which this post appears being but the latest
example.

If Mocality is correct in its claim that Google did not approach them about
using their data, then it is hard to see how what has happened could be a
surprise. Such naivety about the way the web works is simply not credible.

The persons responsible for this are not in Africa or India. They are the
people responsible for oversight; they in the executive offices at the
Googleplex - and I suspect that most of the regret is that this time you were
caught in the honeypot.

~~~
kenjackson
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 is that just a
useful motto when you're the young underdog.

~~~
rdouble
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 worked with over the past decade is now a
manager at Google.

~~~
yuhong
BTW the person who posted this was Nelson Mattos.

------
peterb
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.

~~~
potatolicious
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 apologizing and firing.

~~~
Steko
"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 was 100% contractors. Indications are actually the opposite, see
mocality's post* and the project's website <http://www.kbo.co.ke/> ("managed
by Google").

* [http://blog.mocality.co.ke/2012/01/13/google-what-were-you-t...](http://blog.mocality.co.ke/2012/01/13/google-what-were-you-thinking/)

~~~
acqq
> 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?

~~~
Steko
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 supervision. They're also somewhat hamstrung in that in certain
regional hiring situations, they have to focus on getting someone who can
speak the local language over getting someone of their normal standard of
ethics and acceptable background._

 _As a result I saw people working in Google who did evil things, pure and
simple, especially in the more obscure markets to reach their sales targets.
When they were caught they were fired, when they didn't and succeeded as a
result, they were promoted._

 _This type of thing will always happen. Thinking it won't is a bit childish.
It's Google's official response and subsequent actions that defines their
culture._

[1] <http://www.metafilter.com/111590/Do-Not-Much-Evil#4128023>

~~~
okal
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.

~~~
jamii
If you were feeling generous you could interpret it as saying that 'is
competent & is ethical & speaks english' is necessarily a bigger hiring pool
than 'is competent & is ethical & speaks english & speaks the local language'.
The identity of 'local language' is irrelevant, trying to find bilingual
candidates always narrows the hiring pool.

------
thehodge
The above url is a Google Plus post from a VP at Google

(<http://www.linkedin.com/pub/nelson-mattos/4/703/430>)

~~~
flatline
Thanks - Plus links that are talking about Google are really confusing, it's
impossible to tell from the post if the person is affiliated with Google or
not, but it always leaves that impression in my mind, and that impression is
often wrong.

------
fred_nada
I believe the point is that within the past month Google's "Do no evil" has
jumped the shark. It no longer exists. But some people still trust them for
some reason that I dont understand. Maybe because Matt Cutts seems like a nice
guy or they are just hanging on to google's past. In addition to this Mocality
deal, what stands out is their blatant favoritism of Google+ in their search
results.

Google has been preaching for years about relevancy and unbiased search
results. Even testifying in DC - [http://searchengineland.com/mr-cutts-goes-
to-washington-6123...](http://searchengineland.com/mr-cutts-goes-to-
washington-61234) \- Google’s results are determined by an algorithm and not
tweaked to get particular sites ranking well. - Yet they now have tweaked
their results in order to place their Google+ brand above results that are
much more relevant than theirs.

Some might argue, "hey, it is Google's website - they can do what they want."
I used to think like this too, but the reality is that this behavior is bad
for consumers and bad for businesses. Especially smaller businesses. This
isn't just about Facebook and Twitter... there are hundreds of smaller niche
content players that will be pushed aside by this. And as Google has to grow
to keep shareholders happy, they will have to move into more and more content.
If this still seems like a stretch see the example below.

What if there were only 2 companies that owned land in San Francisco and New
York? One of them was named Google and they owned 70% of San Francisco and 90%
of New York. In the beginning Google allowed anyone to rent their land for
retail stores. So you had all different kind of companies providing different
kinds of products in their stores. Hundreds of different businesses. Then all
of the sudden Google decided to take over those retail locations and sell
their own goods. They also sold other company's goods, but they were way back
in the store. Hidden away. So if you were walking down the street in New York,
90% of the time a store would be owned by Google and 90% of the time you would
only see marginal Google products. Now would that be good for business? Who
would go into business? It would be so hard to compete. Would that be good for
the consumer?

I believe in free enterprise, but only to a certain extent. There is a reason
why antitrust laws exist. If they didn't, companies like Google never would
have existed. We would all be working for Rockefeller.

------
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.

~~~
myko
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.

------
Aloisius
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.

~~~
jrockway
_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.

~~~
pbhjpbhj
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...](http://www.pcworld.com/article/195006/police_seize_gizmodo_editors_tech_gear.html)).

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.

------
aidenn0
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.

------
biafra
It seems Iridium Interactive was the contracted company that called Mocalitys
clients:

[http://www.techmtaa.com/2012/01/13/mocality-accuses-
google-o...](http://www.techmtaa.com/2012/01/13/mocality-accuses-google-of-
playing-dirty-to-win-kenyan-businesses/)

"Google is said to have outsourced all jobs of getting business on KBO to
India’s Iridium Interactive. The calls must have been originating from Iridium
both in Kenya and India. In Kenya they are located on 7th floor Pushotam place
and the key local contact is listed as Juliet Gacheri while in India they also
share an address with Google."

------
peterwwillis
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 (15,000+
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._

~~~
badclient
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.

~~~
michaelcampbell
> 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.

~~~
badclient
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.

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

~~~
tripzilch
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 :)

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

You know, why _not_ think of Google (or Microsoft, or any other Zaibatsu-
pretending-to-be-one-brand) as companies resident within a start-up incubator?
Treating Google's Adsense team as the same "culture" as Google's Search team
makes about as much sense as treating Sony Pictures as being the same company
as Sony Computer Entertainment, or Virgin Airlines as being the same company
as Virgin Mobile.

So, don't say "Google did this to GMail today" or "Google's search is amazing"
or "Google merged their Page Creator into Google Sites"; instead, say "The
GMail team launched this today" or "I love the Google Search folks" or "Google
Page Creator got _bought out by_ Google Sites."

~~~
Klinky
If YCombinator funded/supported say a company that allowed your house to get
trashed with no reparations or attempt to make good, then yes I'd hold that
against YCombinator. Ultimately Google Inc. is where the money funnels to & is
ultimately responsible for it's subcultures.

This idea that Google can't be held responsible for bad employee behavior is
borderline religious. Praise Google when it does something good, let Google
off the hook when it does something bad.

------
swombat
Well, that deserves a +1.

Kind of amazing, I thought it would turn out it was an unconnected company.

~~~
brudgers
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 to just crash their servers).

In addition, it is hard to see much of a downside for Google, they are still
partnering with the biggest bank, largest mobile provider, and the manager of
Kenya's top level domain - anyway there's already one Microsoft for people to
hate and how much of a hit on eyeballs is a story about screwing over a small
company in Africa really going to cause?

This was a rational business decision of the sort that's made everyday by
large multinational companies.

~~~
AznHisoka
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?

~~~
chrisacky
AznHisoka: What did AirBnB do with CraigsList?

~~~
alex_c
Random link on the topic:

[http://venturebeat.com/2011/06/02/airbnb-admits-gaming-
craig...](http://venturebeat.com/2011/06/02/airbnb-admits-gaming-craigslist/)

------
cpdean
tl;dr (kinda skimmed, correct me if I'm wrong)

Mocality is a Kenyan business that gathers and aggregates information about
the businesses in Kenya to improve the economic state of the country through
information infrastructure.

Google (or, apparently, a group contracted by Google) was mining their data
and in turn (effectively) selling it. They were undercutting Mocality while at
the same time claiming that they had previous arrangements with Mocality to do
so.

~~~
sp332
Not quite right. Kenyan businesses opt-in to listing on Mocality, for free.

The Google employees called up businesses on the list, claimed that Mocality
was owned by Google, and tried to upsell some web pages.

<https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3460033>

"I’d like you to meet Douglas. On this call (first 2 minutes) you can clearly
hear Douglas identify himself as Google Kenya employee, state, and then
reaffirm, that GKBO is working in collaboration with Mocality, and that we are
helping them with GKBO, before trying to offer the business owner a website
(and upsell them a domain name). Over the 11 minutes of the whole call he
repeatedly states that Mocality is with, or under (!) Google."

------
rmc
What's fascinating is what wasn't said. What's wasn't said was "This is
nothing to do with us, this was someone unconnected to Google".

------
alphadog
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?

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

~~~
jnbiche
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.

~~~
WettowelReactor
If so this is exactly the kind of thing the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act was
invented for.

------
71104
I wonder what the "appropriate action" will consist of.

------
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.

~~~
Flenser
* 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.

------
badclient
Oh hey, let's use this bad story about google to drive some traffic to
google+.

~~~
1point2
It seems <http://www.kbo.co.ke/> is more or less free (anyone with a google
account can create free sites), the only cost seems to be a domain name -
follow the money.

------
redxaxder
It seems like most of the commenters here are treating the evidence of
Google's wrongdoing as conclusive. It isn't. A comment on the post by Richard
Wooding demonstrated how Joe Random can make requests from a Google IP
address:

[http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?sclient=psy-
ab&...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?sclient=psy-
ab&hl=en&biw=1270&bih=726&source=hp&q=cache%3Awhatismyip.com&pbx=1&oq=cache%3Awhatismyip.com&aq=f&aqi=g4&aql=&gs_sm=e&gs_upl=1357l8049l0l8315l22l5l0l0l0l0l331l1446l2-2.3l5l0)

~~~
hanbam
I don't think that Google Cache acts as a HTTP proxy.

~~~
ComputerGuru
No, but Google Translate does.

