In Kenya, Google was caught red-handed attempting to claim the existence of a business partnership that never even existed. Worse, it appeared to be a blatant attempt to steal that business' customers in an underhanded way. Here's Mocality's CEO, Stef Magdalinski, on the matter:
Since October, Google’s GKBO appears to have been systematically accessing Mocality’s database and attempting to sell their competing product to our business owners. They have been telling untruths about their relationship with us, and about our business practices, in order to do so. As of January 11th, nearly 30% of our database has apparently been contacted.
Furthermore, they now seem to have outsourced this operation from Kenya to India.
When we started this investigation, I thought that we’d catch a rogue call-centre employee, point out to Google that they were violating our Terms and conditions (sections 9.12 and 9.17, amongst others), someone would get a slap on the wrist, and life would continue.
I did not expect to find a human-powered, systematic, months-long, fraudulent (falsely claiming to be collaborating with us, and worse) attempt to undermine our business, being perpetrated from call centres on 2 continents.
Google, you have a lot of explaining to do.
EDIT: One extra note: What makes this situation even worse is that Mocality essentially paid a lot of money out of pocket to build a business database from nothing. For many Kenyan businesses, it’s their first foray into being online in any form whatsoever. So that means Mocality has a right to protect their product.
Digital colonialism.
Someone wanna tell me again how Google is teh bestest and totally not foully corrupt in any way?
(Source: shortformblog)
