It was funny when Google censored themselves for breaking their own rules regarding paid sponsorships. I’m not sure how funny it is that Google employees scraped a competitor’s database to gain a business advantage.
Over the weekend, the head of an online listings firm in Kenya wrote a blog exposing (in detail) how Google had illicitly scraped their customer database and tried to steal their clients.
“Since October, Google’s GKBO [Getting Kenyan Businesses Online] appears to have been systematically accessing Mocality’s database and attempting to sell their competing product to our business owners,” wrote Mocality head Stefan Magdalinski. “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.”
Wow. Are you kidding me? Why on earth would a company as big as Google need to resort to tactics like this against a small competitor in a third-world country just trying to boost local industry?
According to Magdalinski, the whole purpose of his company is to generate online traffic for Kenyan businesses in an effort to bring the country up. It’s free to have a business listing on Mocality, and that’s the general spirit behind the company.
However, it looks as though Google (one of the wealthiest tech companies on the planet) is trying to piggyback on the local small fry.
“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,” wrote Magdalinski.
“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.”
Again, wow. Stay tuned for how Magdalinski busted Google in a second post this afternoon…
