The Google-Kenya ripoff

[rcjordan]

Kiddies, this is on BoingBoing and posted by Cory Doctorow. This is going to get interesting

http://boingboing.net/2012/01/13/google-fraudulently-solicits-f.html

[BoL]

hehe, busted.

[rcjordan]

Looks like it might go viral.  I'm seeing this being picked up elsewhere.

http://blog.mocality.co.ke/2012/01/13/google-what-were-you-thinking/

[rcjordan]

G damage control is on the scene:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2012/jan/13/google-kenyan-rival-mocality-database

[fixed link - Woz]

[Brad]

It is making it's way around the larger tech blogs: ArsTechnica, Mashable, El Reg, etc. It's not hit the mainstream media yet.  Interesting to see if/how it spreads.
http://www.newsnow.co.uk/h/Technology/Internet/Search+Engines

What gets me is how did Google think they would not get caught.  From posts here on Th3 Core, this practice of Google's is much wider spread than currently being reported.  Was it that Google was just blinded by it's own sense of entitlement?

[grnidone]

@RCJordan:  The Guardian url you posted is a 404 link..

[Woz]

Try now G.

[rcjordan]

"Two OpenStreetMap accounts have been vandalizing OSM in London, New York and elsewhere from Google's IP address, the same address in India reported by Mocality."

http://opengeodata.org/google-ip-vandalizing-openstreetmap

[Brad]

It will be interesting to see if this pattern of behavior continues or if Google cleans house.

i suspect that they will clean house because getting caught doing this stuff does not help them with the anti-trust investigations. Although I doubt these investigations have any real teeth.

[rcjordan]

>cleans house

G damage control is on the scene:

Google contractors sacked after vandalizing OpenStreetMap

http://www.theverge.com/2012/1/17/2714044/google-contractors-sacked-vandalism-openstreetmap

[Gurtie]

the point of this surely is that google are now discovering that even with a lot of money to check and train staff/contractors its very hard as a company to ensure they do no evil.

So perhaps a good dose of real world issues will help them to get off their high horse.

Or not.

[Brad]

>damage control

Best spinners on the Web.

>high horse

Naw. That sense of entitlement comes from the top down and it won't change.  However, they might see that their current corporate management structure is having trouble scaling globally and that they need to fix it.  Engineers can grok matters of scale.