January 13, 2012 in Blog by Gil

Today’s Edition of ‘Don’t Be Evil’

Stefan Magdalinski, CEO of Mocality, a sort-of crowd-sourced Yellow Pages directory in Kenya:

Since October, Google’s GKBO appears to have been systematically accessing Mocality’s database and attempting to sell their competing product to our business owners. 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.

Furthermore, they now seem to have outsourced this operation from Kenya to India.

Copiously documented and recorded. Just jaw-dropping. Boing Boing has a brief statement from Google. My question: Is Mocality the only company Google has done this to?