Google has fired its Kenyan head after the data-poaching gaff from late last year. The move has all the hallmarks of Google’s approach to things lately—screw up and then make up for it.
According to Forbes, Google’s Vice-President for Europe, the Middle East and Africa posted on his Google+ account Friday that he had taken “appropriate action with the people involved” and changed things so nothing like that would happen again.
Beginning last fall, Google employees in Kenya and then India scraped a local Kenyan business’ client database and tried to sell those clients Google products, fraudulently acting as though Google and the company were working together.
Not true. Stefan Magdalinski, CEO of Mocality (which runs an online database of Kenyan businesses), publicly aired Google’s whites a couple weeks ago.
Magdalinski ran a sting operation that uncovered Google’s shady tactics. It’s an interesting read, actually, complete with Mocality employees acting as clients and Google employees lying to them on recorded phone calls (check out The Google Sting for more details).
South Africa’s News24.com broke the news this morning that Google had let go its Kenyan head, Olga Arara-Kimani, who represented the company around the East African region.
According to the Daily Nation, however, Arara-Kimani left Google of her own accord. (Not that it matters in the end.)
“I confirm I have left Google Kenya,” Arara-Kimani told the Daily Nation on Monday. “As the leader of the Kenya office, I felt that the buck stopped with me and I decided to leave.”
Maybe it’s just semantics, but either way she’s gone because of the incident. And so is a staff member in Zurich, according to News24.com.
