Google Plays Dirty in Kenya

There is a damning post out by Stefan Magdalinski on some unsavory business practices being done by Google Kenya against Mocality. Mocality designed a fantastic crowdsourcing tool to create their mobile web-based business listings directory back in 2010. There is undeniable proof that Google’s team here has been systematically calling businesses in the Mocality business directory in an effort to poach them to their own “Getting Your Business Online” program for Kenya.

The long and short: Mocality claims Google Kenya is using its database to sell a competing product.

For some context, the Google team in Kenya has always been above board. They are genuinely good people, so seeing this happen is incredibly surprising. I’ve been trying to get in touch with them since yesterday when I first was made aware of this situation, but have had no response to any of my queries.

The problem here is that the sting put on by Mocality is so complete. They have all the forensics and even voice recordings to show what Google is doing. I want to believe that Google has an answer for this that makes sense.

UPDATE: Google has owned up to this, saying:

“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.”