By embracing a phrase, “Don’t be Evil” Google decided to hold itself up to a higher standard. It is failing miserably. 

Some people who use Google services make the mistake of thinking they are Google’s customers when in fact they are the product. Google sells the users of its products information to its real customers,  advertising companies. 

Regardless, a company is generally (but not always) held liable for the actions of its employees. Google taking the work of others without permission or compensation seems to be an ingrained corporate Moto. If Google didn’t specifically direct the behavior, through its own actions it encouraged such behavior. 

Google’s one of those companies where saying anything either way makes you a straight up hater or a pathetic fanboi white knight. But while gigantic richer-than-God corporations can be both crazy and evil, they just aren’t this kind of crazy or evil. 

They could very well be scammers profiting off Google by using GKBO — creating a bunch of free websites using easy tools and then reselling them. That makes them a bunch of profit for 10m spent putting some things in a web page.

Second, those access patterns are pretty weird for a business which is built around automatically scraping content on the internet. As the post says, it looks like humans, not robots. Why would Google use humans to do something a computer could do much better, especially something within their specialty?

I’m skeptical, but not convinced either way. Specifically, the G+ post from Google about it is weird — they’re not saying it’s a bunch of scammers, at least not yet. Also, I don’t know if the Google IP could be spoofed.

What I was trying to infer is that you’re expecting that ‘Google’ as a massive entity is purposely allowing this to happen, instead of allowing the assumption (valid as your own assumption) that this wasn’t a malicious purposeful act by All of Google, and trying to imply that it runs rampant within the company. It’s an easy way to get support when generalizing and good-versus-evil’ing things.

Here’s Google’s current response: https://plus.google.com/u/0/115264064268941645500/posts/WfALKwfmCGJ

Google is doing business within the boundaries that law and society currently has set, but I believe you will find a heart somewhere in the big engine of theirs – and it’s noticeable compared to other large companies like Facebook who blatantly do things people don’t want, repeatedly, primarily around trust/privacy – which is arguably the most important thing a person has.

“Multiple Month Long Fraud” — The higher-ups might not have even known about this until Mocality raised their voice. Unless you’re privy to their structures, a simple assumption that could be made is that it was one or a few offices managed by an individual, who perhaps reported to another individual, who reports to other people about the progress..

Yup – Google’s big so you hear about it. You mention “there are many large corporations who still have the slightest bit of ethics and integrity,” though just following it you mention “Imagine all the other bullshit going on there that hasn’t even been brought to light” – which truthfully can be applied to every other ‘ethical’ business you’re purporting exist in the purest way possible; Of course some exist but they too can have dirt and you not know about it.

Final note – Calling me a Google fanboy you immediately diminished yourself to a name-caller, pretty lame argument tactic.

Here’s Google’s current response: https://plus.google.com/u/0/115264064268941645500/posts/WfALKwfmCGJ

And they’d both be wrong, it seems.

There are probably more facts to come, but Google’s statement in the update seems to confirm the allegations.

The fact that this is a small Kenyan business, does not make it LESS likely that a corporate titan like Google may seek to take liberties (even via a proxy), it makes it MORE so. Wake up and smell corporate coffee people.

https://plus.google.com/u/0/115264064268941645500/posts/WfALKwfmCGJ

So, yes, Google is a big company and not every action can be monitored inside the company. But this was a months long fraud operation in two different regions of Google. This isn’t just a small rogue team, this was something being perpetrated higher up in Google. Obviously not at the CEO level, but fairly high up.

People like you who will defend every single slimy tactic of Google need to pull their heads out of the sand. The “Don’t be evil” motto is complete bullshit. 5 years ago I believed it, but not anymore. Not only is Google NOT an ethical company, they are actually one of the most unethical “evil” companies in corporate America.

And their size has nothing to do with it. There are many large corporations who still have the slightest bit of ethics and integrity. They have quickly become today what Microsoft was like in the 90s. Anticompetitive, engaging is questionable antitrust behavior, and highly unethical. Remember what they also did to Skyhook? Imagine all the other bullshit going on there that hasn’t even been brought to light.

Now Google has responded and confirmed that their company (perhaps unknowingly), has defintely had a hand in this ordeal. Where are your convoluted descriptions of a “hacker” who ONLY is attempting to sell Google products who has committed fraud and deception?

And then to use Occam’s Razor…….LOL…..

You’re more likely to believe that a conspiracy of fraudulent activity has been officially proposed and executed by several of google’s employees and management…

Because if we’ve learned anything from the banking crisis, it’s that managers never deliberately set out to….oh, wait.

Not hard.

The source link…
http://blog.mocality.co.ke/2012/01/13/google-what-were-you-thinking/
includes two recorded phonecalls from Google employees, as well as a transcript from another one.

Proof: http://thenextweb.com/africa/2011/09/12/google-launches-program-to-help-get-kenyan-business-online/

It’s like if I wrote a script that searched YellowPages.com or whatever for business info and offered to design and host a site for those businesses. YellowPages exists to get business information to consumers and other segments of the public at large. 

So, maybe I’m being unforgivably dense, but what’s the real issue, here? It looks like whoever used Mocality for the purpose it is trying to serve – getting business information to the public.

Is it the portion of Mocality’s data that was trawled?