Google apologizes to Kenya Search Directory Mocality

In a lengthy post titled ‘Google what were you thinking’ on their blog, Mocality provided detailed evidence against which they backed their allegations against Google. This includes a recorded audio conversation between a Google Kenya representative and Mocality (disguised as a local business in need of a free website). Mocality also reported to have monitored the IP addresses scraping their databases and traced them back to Google.

Google issued an apology statement on Jan 14th 2012 Google apologizes to Kenya search directory Mocality promising to investigate the matter and take necessary action against the people involved. The statement however did not seem to issue a straight explanation of whether the teams of people working on the Google project were employees of the company but seemed to rather suggest that a third party contractor was in play.

“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.”

The Getting Kenyan Businesses Online project is managed by Google in partnership with Safaricom Limited, Equity Bank of Kenya and the Kenya Network Information Center (KENIC).