Google Kenya head exits after Mocality sting
The head of Google’s Kenyan operations has reportedly left the company after online business directory Mocality accused the search giant of dodgy business practices in the region.
Mocality head Stefan Magdalinski presented evidence on Mocality’s blog showing that not only was Google in violation of their terms of use by scraping its business directory, call centre agents were claiming Google had a relationship with Mocality when it didn’t.
Nelson Mattos, Google vice-president for product and engineering in Europe and Emerging Markets, responded to the allegations with the following statement:
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.
Mattos has since revealed that Google has concluded its investigation and had “taken appropriate action with the people involved.”
This has lead to reports based on information published by the blog Nairobitech that the head of Google Kenya, Olga Arara-Kimani, had been axed along with “a technical guy” in Zurich.
However, Kenyan newspaper Daily Nation reported that Arara-Kimani had left of her own accord, quoting her as saying: “I felt that the buck stopped with me and I decided to leave.”
Asked whether Arara-Kimani had indeed left and what the nature of her exit was, Dorothy Ooko, communications & public affairs for East & Francophone at Google, said: “It is true that Olga is no longer with the company. And as we adhere to the privacy policy, we will not comment on the personal business of our ex-employees.”
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