/ Cory Doctorow / 10:49 am Fri Jan 13, 2012

Google: We're "mortified" a team working on Google project "misrepresented" relationship with Mocality

A followup to this morning's post, The Google-Kenya Ripoff. Nelson Mattos, Google's Vice-President for Product and Engineering, Europe and Emerging Markets, writes:

We were mortified to learn that a team of people working on a Google project improperly used Mocality’s data and misrepresented our relationship with Mocality to encourage customers to create new websites. We’ve already unreservedly apologised to Mocality. 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.

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      1. I imagine the whole story is that a huge multi-national company cannot avoid employing the occasional dingus

          2. I’m going to invoke the little known exception that accepts “dinguses” over “dingii” because the former almost rhymes with “penises.”

    2. I don’t know if I count as a “googly defender,” but it sounds like the story is what you say it is, and not “Google decided to use a tiny non-competitor to run a scam that would make it 0.0000000008% more profitable.” That’s what I think most of the “defenders” were pointing out.

      The question was, is this a rogue Mocality black-hat, a rogue Google black-hat, or a third-party scammer? Well, now we know: Google hired the bad guy. But I think we can at least believe them when they say that they didn’t hire the bad guy so that he could go do this bad thing.

      1. I don’t think anyone believed that Larry Page or Nelson Mattos said, “Let’s get ahead in Kenya with a stupid scam.” But someone moderately senior (not a single person, but someone with a team) ran this, and her/his team was a part of it.

        The open questions are:

        1. Did Google have systems in place that failed to catch the rogue, and would a reasonable person have considered these to be sufficient systems?

        2. How high in Google did this go?

        3. What is Google doing about it?

        I suspect that no one at Google (apart from the perpetrators) knows the answers to 2, and 3 won’t be determined until after 1 and 2 are resolved. I’d be interested in hearing more about 1.

        1. Google’s left a lot of wiggle room with that phrase “a team of people working on a Google project”.  That doesn’t definitely say “a group of Google employees” – it could be consultants they hired to work on a project who are trying to pump their numbers.  It’s nice to see Google own the responsibility more than many companies do, but there’s still a lot of room in that phrasing for the ultimate blame to end up on someone “not Google”.

          1. It is good to see them take responsibility, but even if it is a team of contractors operating under the Google name it’s not that much wiggle room. After all, why don’t they have enough presence to discourage it with that group, to put it charitably? They still have accountability there. Google still owns the culture that goes with the name.

            Anyway, some one some where has a great opportunity for a paper out of this.

    3. Because Google said they were going to investigate? How is this incriminating? Well, you’ve put me in an awkward state, because I don’t find the evidence all that convincing and I want to see more — because that follow-up quote clearly doesn’t prove *anything*. 

      Am I a “googly defender” because I don’t want a rush to judgment based on people’s prejudices for or against Google? Well, I currently hate the bastards over the pseudonym thing actually. :) But that’s no reason to assume they’re lying and I *really* don’t get how it’s a reason to start getting smug? :(

      Corporate lies do happen. So do accidents. And I’ve seen enough of these stories turn out to be nothing — remember those three days that Amazon was definitely, absolutely, unquestionably run by evil homophobes because their database got glitched? I’m not saying for a moment that Google’s above doing something like this. I’m saying we don’t exactly have enough information to start payin’ off bets here. :p

      (Also, Cory, I hope those aren’t supposed to  be scare quotes in the title…)

      1. Holy cow. Google has admitted involvement, even if it wasn’t Larry Page doing it. It was people within the Google organization. Google is responsible for the acts of their employees. Unless Google is paying you be a shill, why is it so important to you that they are “innocent”. Frankly, Google could use a few more of these kinds of incidents to bring them back down to earth a bit. They’re getting a bit too egotistical for their own good.

        1. This is a relatively small business niche (very low double digit millions I guess). Google usually does not look after scraps, unless they are strategically important. (Spending manpower on tweaking another fraction of a percent out of Adsense revenues is worth more than a few millions.) 

          On the other hand, the current shitstorm has the potential to harm Google’s brand in serious ways. Doing evil by cheating a relatively small African startup in the most blatant way is an extremely stupid move. It just does not make a lot of sense; if you want to be evil, it should at least pay off. Google is not known for obvious stupidity; now it is going to cost them a substantial sum to fix things. 

      2. I think it’s pretty certain now that “a team of people working on a Google project” did something bad — Google’s VP said so explicitly, and they wouldn’t have said so it they didn’t think it were true. Companies generally don’t go around admitting to misdeads that they didn’t do.

        So that part’s certain. What’s not certain is who, exactly, these people were. They could be bottom-level month-long contractors or it could be the VP of the entire Kenyan office.

        So far most people, even the most anti-Google, aren’t suggesting that there was some kind of company-wide policy to screw Kenya.

  2. We have a saying in my industry: “Shit happens.”

    I have a personal saying that goes something like: “How you clean it up is what matters.”

  3. Captain Renault: I’m shocked, shocked to find that gambling is going on in here!

    [a croupier hands Renault a pile of money]
    Croupier: Your winnings, sir.

    Captain Renault: [sotto voce] Oh, thank you very much.

    1. I don’t think anyone believed that Larry Page or Nelson Mattos said, “Let’s get ahead in Kenya with a stupid scam.” But someone moderately senior (not a single person, but someone with a team) ran this, and her/his team was a part of it.

      <—- This parent does.

  5. Excellent response from Google. Basically what I expected. It’s impossible for a company that size to prevent hiring the occasional bad apple, but it is possible to take responsibility for the fuck-up and fix it.

  6. Everyone seems to be treating this rather non-nonchalantly. Isn’t this fraud? And you know, criminal? Should the police/FBI be involved? Shouldn’t there be arrests?

    If I called up people saying I had a fake partnership from Google and asked them to sign up for my competing service, I’m pretty sure I’d go to jail.

    1. Sure, but it’s difficult for a guy in Africa to call the police on a series of scams that originated in Kenya or India.  Even with a US-based company, I’m pretty sure the Kenyans don’t call the FBI.

  7. Whether you believe someone near the core of  Google management knew about this or not, you have to admit, it’s not every day you see a major corporation release a statement to the press with the word “mortified” in it. 

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