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Google, what were you thinking?
This article is being blocked, even though it has been submitted by 10+ people by now, and seems highly relevant.
Here's the URL: http://blog.mocality.co.ke/2012/01/13/google-what-were-you-thinking/
- yanw 15y agoGoogle's statement via: http://paidcontent.org/article/419-google-investigating-kenyan-client-poaching-allegations/ http://paidcontent.org/article/419-google-investigating-keny... 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.
- JS_startup 15y agoThis needs to be at the top. Google confirms that it was their representatives who pulled off the scam, not someone posing as Google. We can all stop making excuses for them now
- jcslzr 15y agoWell some people at Google were dishonest, like in any other organization in the world. I wonder if its also dishonest people working in search results...
- deleted 15y ago[deleted]
- fred_nada 15y agoThe funny thing is everyone continues to make excuses. Already 2 in the past 5 minutes...
- zukhan 15y agoMaybe it's the Google employees on here trying to make excuses for their employer?
- notatoad 15y agoIt is at the top. And also in the article. Please don't make "this needs to be at the top" comments, and just use the arrows. That's what they're for.
- deleted 15y ago[deleted]
- sek 15y agoWe should accept that Google has many employees and some of them are black sheep. They are not perfect, but they seem very transparent by admitting it.
- robryan 15y agoAny large company can use that excuse though, they still benefit greatly from the activity. It's pretty rare you see a big company not try an shift the blame to contractors or a small international office. If you can't have effective oversight over all your operations then maybe the company is to big.
- karpathy 15y agoExactly. As I'm reading over all the aftermath I get the feeling that this is overblown. With organization of this size there will always be some black sheep at some point in time. Google should be judged not by what happens, but how they react.
- grannyg00se 15y agoBut what did Google do about it other than issue an apology? Are these "black sheep" going to continue to be employed? Is the culture in which they were enabled going to be allowed to persist in the company? Is Google going to make any real effort to repair damage to the offended party?
- lancewiggs 15y agoTo summarize what we know, think we know and the open questions are: What we know: 1: Google employees or contractors or partners did this (called Mocality listed businesses, said they were from Google/Mocality and sold websites etc.) 2: Apparently they were a rogue person/team/unit inside of Google 3: But there seemed to be a lot of callers involved 4: They moved the calling unit to India 5: Google HQ now knows about this Speculation 1: Nobody in Google HQ knew about this at the time 2: The person or people involved in Google Kenya were quite high up to be able to motivate that many people 3: The India team was not part of Google's team. (or perhaps they were). They got involved because the heat was on in Kenya. 4: Mocality suffered a loss here (e.g. use of data to be used to solicit businesses against their terms and conditions), the people doing so were at Google and representing Google and thus Google has opened themselves up for a considerable legal mess. 5: The Nigerian courts and legal system are too hard/expensive/slow for Mocality and Google to navigate, so Mocality have turned to PR to motivate Google to change. 6: That approach is working, and it should be working. Google needs to do something urgently to fix this. 7: Getting rid of the partners is insufficient remedy for Mocality. There needs to be some compensation involved for the solicitation of a considerable percentage of Mocality's listings. 8: Ultimately the best way for Google to handle this is to purchase Mocality. Questions 1:Was the India team a Google team one or outsourced to some rascals there? 2: What will Google do to compensate Mocality of this scam? 3: Has Mocality retained a lawyer in Nigeria, have they formally asked Google to Cease and Desist and requested compensation? 4: Why has Google not approached Mocality wrt purchase of their data? 5: Who has the relationship with any businesses that did sign up to the scammers? What will happen to that relationship and to the money paid?
- fedd 15y ago> 5: The Nigerian courts and legal system are too hard/expensive/slow for Mocality and Google to navigate, so Mocality have turned to PR to motivate Google to change. ... > 3: Has Mocality retained a lawyer in Nigeria, have they formally asked Google to Cease and Desist and requested compensation? Kenya is sorta different country.. :)
- ww520 15y agoKudos to Google for owning up to it rather than shifting blame to others. I wonder what kind of internal control Google has. Google is big enough that some of the internal/external auditing controls needed to be in place.
- deleted 15y ago[deleted]
- spIrr 15y agoIndeed, since they are on US SE (NYSE?), they are required to implement internal controls under Sarbanes-Oxley Act and they should be indeed audited by a third-party auditor (E&Y, if i recall correctly), including attestation of the controls. And, to best of my knowledge, the actions described in this article do have to be authorized by the top management of Google or by Head of the respective Department (the Control procedure), since this involves a material amount of expenses and also represents a revenue component. Now, E&Y should do they work and investigate the reason for this 'failure' of controls, as Google states and it wouldn't be bad if the PCAOB will be involved with a review of E&Y.
- mooism2 15y agoSee also http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3459966 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3459966
- estel 15y agohttp://blog.mocality.co.ke/2012/01/13/google-what-were-you-thinking/ http://blog.mocality.co.ke/2012/01/13/google-what-were-you-t... clickable Must have been submitted at least a hundred times this morning.
- EwanToo 15y agoSeems a very odd situation, I assume the URL has been manually flagged enough times that all submissions to that URL are now marked as spam automatically. I'd be curious to know who's flagging it though.
- alexmuller 15y agoI left this comment on the original post, but it's been caught by the spam filter there: Hi Stefan – apologies if I’ve missed something, but the only solid proof I can see that this is actually run by Google is that the IP address some calls came from was assigned to Google. Last year Mark Turner was concerned that the Department of Defense was listening in on his phone calls because of an IP address that later turned out to not belong to them at all, but (I believe) was being squatted on by Sprint. Couldn’t the same thing be happening here? http://www.markturner.net/2011/11/08/why-is-the-defense-department-snooping-on-my-phone/ http://www.markturner.net/2011/11/08/why-is-the-defense-depa... I wonder whether the scammers aren’t actually employed by Google and are simply out to make a quick buck by pretending they are. Can anyone speak to the technical aspects of his analysis? I'm not seeing any truly compelling proof that this is run by Google. Just the one IP address that's registered to Mountain View.
- russss 15y agoThat Sprint problem was caused by Sprint "borrowing" DoD addresses to use in their internal NATed mobile network. This wouldn't be an issue with a standard web site like Mocality which is directly connected to the Internet, instead of via NAT. I trust Mocality's technical chops enough to believe that the IP traffic is coming from where they say it's coming from. As additional proof, the callers claim to be from Google, and Getting Kenyan Businesses Online is a genuine Google initiative. So a lot of things wouldn't add up if it turned out not to be Google behind it.
- nl 15y agoI trust Mocality's technical chops enough to believe that the IP traffic is coming from where they say it's coming from. I agree with this. the callers claim to be from Google, and Getting Kenyan Businesses Online is a genuine Google initiative Claiming to be a member of something legitimate on a phonecall is scamming 101 - it's usually very hard for the person on the other end of the line to verify it immediately.
- xentronium 15y ago
- Andaith 15y agoIs there any actual proof that it was google? It sounds to me like someone is borrowing their name for legitimacy.
- waitwhat 15y agoScroll down a bit to "Results (2)": These new accesses were coming directly from Google’s network. The IP address 74.125.63.33 made 17,645 requests (15,554 to BusinessProfile.aspx)
- kalleboo 15y ago"Google's network" could also just mean an App Engine user.
- russss 15y agoGKBO appears to be a genuine Google initiative - its domain is registered to Google and served from their nameservers: http://www.kbo.co.ke/ http://www.kbo.co.ke/
- cookiecaper 15y agoThis doesn't mean that the people on the other end of the phone actually are employed by Google. They could have heard of the Google initiative and attempted to capitalize on the opportunity.
- rmc 15y agoExactly, Pretending to be Someone Else™ is Scamming 101.
- handelaar 15y agoAnd yet the people on the other end of the phone are somehow able to create phony websites you didn't ask for as subdomains? (FSM only knows what the Google search ranking consequences of that might be.) http://blog.mocality.co.ke/2012/01/13/google-what-were-you-thinking/#comment-488 http://blog.mocality.co.ke/2012/01/13/google-what-were-you-t...
- yanw 15y agoI'm assuming it was flagged because the headline was in ALL CAPS.
- bnr 15y agotext-transform: uppercase; There's lowercase text in the DOM.
- hellweaver666 15y agoStrangely though, if you copy and paste in Chrome, you get uppercase text, even if it's lowercase in the DOM.
- justincormack 15y agoI would file a bug for that...
- yanw 15y agoThat is why it has the "Paste as plain text" option.
- deleted 15y ago[deleted]
- Tichy 15y agoAre those known Google IPs? Otherwise I suppose anybody could just register something as "Google"? Just saying, WHOIS might not be very reliable.
- russss 15y agoWHOIS is generally very reliable - there are identity checks when you register for IP space (especially with ARIN, which is who provides Google's IP space). One other way you can check is by looking at the organisation handle in the WHOIS - it's GOGL, which is the same org handle as you'll find on all their IP addresses if you WHOIS them. That ties up with the ARIN site: http://whois.arin.net/rest/org/GOGL http://whois.arin.net/rest/org/GOGL I've done a fair bit of network engineering and I'm convinced that this is actually a Google address.
- rmc 15y agoI upvoted you, but WHOIS is quite reliable for checking domain names. It's also part of a /16 block, i.e. 65,000 IP addresses. They don't just give those out willy-nilly, you need to explain how and why you need them. A 2 bit operation with a name that sounds like a massive internet company can't just get a /16. Those IP addresses are assigned to Google. (Obvious caveat, just cause they're assigned to Google doesn't mean this is a Google mandated operation. Other explainations: Rougue Employees, Rouge Outsources, compromised PC in Google office, Google App Engine, etc.)
- AndrewDucker 15y agoI am hoping that this is a rogue group of local Google employees who are about to be smacked down by Google head office. This kind of thing is going to happen occasionally with global organisations, but Google needs to do something public quickly to make it clear that this is against policy.
- mike-cardwell 15y agoI am hoping the opposite. I am hoping that this was sanctioned by head office, so it destroys their undeserved and harmful, "does no evil," reputation.
- bruceboughton 15y agoSo you're hoping Google has done something evil so people will think they're evil?!
- mike-cardwell 15y agoI am hoping that Google has been exposed for their "evil" business practices, so people start to realise that they're just another rich corporation trying to make profit at the expense of others. I don't want them to do "evil" things. But they do. People are blind to this and need a wake up call. EDIT: The downvotes only serve to prove my point
- urbanjunkie 15y agoHow are downvotes proving your point?
- mike-cardwell 15y agoBecause people are blind to Google doing evil and immediately jump to defend them (by downvoting in this case) This is exactly where their undeserved reputation is harmful. It lets them get away with things that other corporations wouldn't be able to. If what the blog described is true. Then Google did Evil. It does not matter which branch of Google. If Microsoft did the same, they wouldn't be defended half as much as Google is being.
- shrikant 15y agoIt looks like HN auto-kills *.co.ke links.
- EwanToo 15y agoImpressive, given that's the country code for Kenya :) .co.ke for companies .or.ke for NGOs .me.ke for personal websites and emails .ac.ke for academic institutions I wonder if HN had a big spam issue in the past from Kenyan domains?
- okal 15y agoDoubtful. .ke domains don't pack that much SEO juice and are a little more expensive than generic TLDs, so I don't see them being appealing for spammers.
- CubicleNinjas 15y agoHa, ha - thank you. I learned something! Now to go buy some co.ke (domains) to amuse myself.
- mjwalshe 15y agoor if google employes where downvoating negative stories it would be interesting to see the ip addresses of any down votes. normal companies ban employees from participating in online discussions about their company certinaly at British telecom uk.telecom and alt.2600 where off-limits. Though I was asked by our press office to post an oficial respose to alt.2600 once but SD (security directoy) put a stop to that :-)
- rmc 15y agoReally? That seems very bad form, since it's the country code for a medium sized country with a higher population than Canada.
- nicpottier 15y agoI'm curious to see how this ends up. The upsell is the part that makes me suspicious, because that doesn't sound like the type of thing that Google would do. My guess is this. It is someone claiming to be Google and selling a service that is actually free. That's a pretty common thing to see in Africa, in Rwanda we see people 'selling' Google Apps for domains all the time. The WHOIS lookup does give me pause though.
- ma2rten 15y agoCould the http requests be made from Google App Engine? Then again, why would the scammers go though such hoops.
- deleted 15y ago[deleted]
- rmc 15y agoHide themselves? It's essentially a form of proxy.
- cellis 15y agoFor legitimacy. Don't make the mistake of thinking the only people who know about App Engine are San Franciscan hipsters with Macbook Pros. Blackhat hackers stay just as updated on technology trends as everyone else.
- tripzilch 15y agoThat still doesn't make sense. The only thing the scammers did with those IPs seems to have been searching the Mocality database. The only reason why those IPs even got exposed is because of the thorough investigation Mocality has made (or, claims to have made): After the first wave of confused calls by their customers, they cross-checked their logs and found one IP with an uncommon UA accessing all these records, then they served a fake phone number to that IP and confirmed that whoever was making these fraudulent calls was indeed operating from that IP and claiming to be Google in cooperation with Mocality. Now it could be that these are scammers that found a clever way to proxy through Google on the off-chance that Mocality would do this investigation and evidence would continue to point to Google? Ok I get "pretending to be someone else" is scamming 101, but "pretending to be someone else when the person you're pretending to be cooperating with finds out about and the scam is pretty much exposed" it just sounds like an incredible amount of trouble for an eventuality that is very unlikely and even then it doesn't seem to help much? "No, let's somehow proxy through Google so that if Mocality becomes suspicious and tracks us they'll think it's Google and the whole Internet will get confused and the people of HN will get into arguments ... mwuahahahaha ... excellent ..." Can't you see, this is what Google wants us to think! ;-)
- deleted 15y ago[deleted]
- mechanical_fish 15y agoCurious: If I had a Google App Engine account, a) could I open outbound HTTP connections, and b) what IP range would I appear to be coming from? Not that I find it unbelieveable that Google, multinational megacorp, could and would do this thing, but this evidence still seems kinda circumstantial. I mean, here's hypothesis two: One compromised PC in Google's HQ, running a proxy.
- sern 15y agoYou can fetch web pages and you'll appear as coming from a Google IP, but your user agent header will contain "AppEngine-Google".
- acqq 15y agoAnd "AppEngine-Google" user agents were not logged: http://blog.mocality.co.ke/2012/01/13/google-what-were-you-thinking/ http://blog.mocality.co.ke/2012/01/13/google-what-were-you-t...
- jontas 15y agoI'm not familiar with AppEngine at all, but could you really not craft your own headers? Isn't it python's urlib or similar?
- deleted 15y ago[deleted]
- mkl 15y agoSeems like you can set the user agent: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2743521/how-to-change-user-agent-on-google-app-engine-urlfetch-service http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2743521/how-to-change-use...
- rcfox 15y agoHow would you make money from that though? "Please make the cheque out to Google Kenya, spelled C-A-S-H."
- instakill 15y agoI'm really surprised that nobody from Google has made a statement yet. Even if the detective work was wrong, Google has suffered a huge PR blow. This story is all over HN, all over G+ (at least the HN circle), all over my Twitter stream (which includes some top tech journos from South Africa) and is slowly being republishing on various blogs. Google needs to respond now!
- deleted 15y ago[deleted]
- rmc 15y agoThe first part sounds pretty circumstancial, since pretending to be from a big company (Google) is a basic scamming technique. However the second instance is from part of a /16 IPv4 block assigned to Google. It could just be a compromised proxy on someone's machine.
- richoakley 15y agoYou don't think it is a bit ridiculous that somebody, pretending to be Google, would go to the effort of running requests through Google App Engine, just in case somebody ran a trace against the logs in the hope of figuring out where the IP address was? All evidence points at Google and the likelihood that that's as a result of some serious planning by a paranoid scammer is unlikely.
- joshz 15y agoAccording to this post Google knows and will have a statement soon. http://boingboing.net/2012/01/13/google-fraudulently-solicits-f.html http://boingboing.net/2012/01/13/google-fraudulently-solicit...
- ck2 15y agoAre you sure some other entity didn't just figure out how to use google as a proxy, ie. via their translator tool?
- tripzilch 15y agoComing from a Google IP isn't the biggest clue (though the second one from India seems pretty damning), they also say they work for Google and then try to sell those businesses websites from Google. If it was some other entity, why'd they sell Google-built websites?
- trapped123 15y agoThis is what I don't like about Google. They would like to extract content from others for free and then use it for their own profit. But they don't allow others to extract content from their sites or charge exorbitantly to use their APIs. They give something for free only if they can make money by selling ads or if they can capture user behavior.
- orijing 15y agoThey are also a public company that generates profits for shareholders.
- Eliezer 15y agoAnyone who thinks this is an actual plot by Google, seriously, you need to notice your own confusion. It doesn't fit the modus operandi of any other way they make money.
- brudgers 15y agoIf Mocality's assertion that the only way to directly build a directory of Kenyan businesses is boots on the ground, then either Google must put boots on the ground or build their directory indirectly. Let's assume that Google chose to put boots on the ground - what then is the most efficient way for those people to build a directory? It seems to me that utilizing Mocality's existing directory would at least be considered - Google's modus operandi has always been aggregating whatever is on the web and presenting it as their product. "Getting Kenyan Businesses Online" is a Google project and among it's partner benefits are: Opportunity to offer relevant value-added products/services that bolt onto the Google offering in support of SMB business growth Ability to run own events and drive participation across own customer base co-branded with Google [http://www.kbo.co.ke/partnerbenefits http://www.kbo.co.ke/partnerbenefits] The Next Web's Coverage of Google's kickoff stated: According to Google, together with its partners, “GKBO will provide free or subsidized services to help businesses to use web and internet technologies. This includes supporting organizations that provide assistance for small and medium businesses, as well as other industry organizations that are aligned with the aims of the initiative.” Note that the services are not necessarily free and that Google will partner with whoever it sees fit. [http://thenextweb.com/africa/2011/09/12/google-launches-program-to-help-get-kenyan-business-online/ http://thenextweb.com/africa/2011/09/12/google-launches-prog...] There's nothing in the allegations which is inconsistent with Google's M.O. of aggregating other people's data on the web and encouraging people to put more information online.
- swombat 15y agoIt would be a million times cheaper and simpler for Google to acquire Mocality outright than to do what is being claimed they have done. I also don't believe that they have actually done this (but it'll be interesting to see this story unfold).
- wildmXranat 15y agoWell, somebody will either get a smack upside the head or a raise. This is a blemish if proven to be a Google operation and there's no way subversive tactics of this kind are looked upon with good grace.
- Loic 15y agoThe history tells us that Google subsidiaries have quite a level of freedom to have their own strategy to achieve the desired outcomes. You can remember the paid blog posts for google.jp for example. So, Google Kenya will be kind of banned or whatever and mea-culpa will come out, life will go on. What I find more interesting if everything is true, is that they have cheap manual workers in India doing the scrapping manually to then cold call. It means that if their "crawlers" are not smart enough, they are ready to go "manual" to enter a market. For me this is really an interesting piece of news and this is where I am a bit afraid of Google hegemony.
- boscomutunga 15y agoWell, it will be interesting to hear what google has to say but meanwhile there seems to be a lot of people with axes to grind with google.On the other hand, what's taking so long, google should have given a statement on the issue.
- samlev 15y agoThere's a couple of reasons why I think this doesn't seem quite right: - "Large human effort" doesn't seem like Google's style - a screen scrape for info would be faster for them, and I'd assume that they already have tools built to do that. - If the callers are lying about being affiliated with mocality, then why can't we assume that they might also be lying about being from Google? - Google would likely have the entire site indexed and cached already, so there's very little reason for them to get actual people to manually screen-scrape the live site. - OK, the second wave is coming from a Google IP, but why wasn't the first wave coming from one? Yeah, it looks pretty bad, but this type of behaviour is so atypical of Google. It seems almost laughable to make the assumption that it's anything other than scammers trying to take advantage of Google announcements to try to make a quick/easy buck by selling Google services as an affiliate.
- cloudwalking 15y agoI'm also very curious what services the callers were offering. Are they services Google offers? Services Google charges for?
- cloudwalking 15y agoOk, after reading over this transcript, it's clearly a scam unrelated to Google: http://blog.mocality.co.ke/files/2012/01/Incoming_Call-Redacted-20111221-1133502.pdf http://blog.mocality.co.ke/files/2012/01/Incoming_Call-Redac... 1. Google doesn't offer website creation. 2. Google doesn't charge for low-traffic hosting. 3. Google wouldn't setup your website via email.
- AznHisoka 15y agoAs an aside, there's a good business idea hidden in this: a website monitoring service that monitors for scrapers, showing you hit rates for IPs, which countries, user agents, what pages, etc. Sends you a SMS or email when it detects a scraper and you can take action.
- billpatrianakos 15y agoNo need to circumvent. This is already the top story.
- blhack 15y agoOh, malarky. Here. I set up a page at http://lab2.gibsonandlily.com/google.html http://lab2.gibsonandlily.com/google.html Then I ran it through google translation services. Here is the result in apache's log: 74.125.16.18 - - [13/Jan/2012:10:45:37 -0600] "GET /google.html HTTP/1.1" 200 327 "http://translate.google.com/translate_p?hl=en&sl=fr&tl=en&u=http://lab2.gibsonandlily.com/google.html&usg=ALkJrhjD8_-6RDHslD53lf9XsYx2_J1q4A http://translate.google.com/translate_p?hl=en&sl=fr&... "Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 5.1) AppleWebKit/535.7 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/16.0.912.75 Safari/535.7,gzip(gfe) Look familiar? This one is tossing up windows NT, which is strange, but it doesn't seem like a stretch that some of the machines at google for stuff like this are running linux. The scam here isn't being done by google, it's just a run-of-the-mill scammer scamming and using google's name. Dearest mocotality. Turning on referals in apache logs and you'll see where on google this is coming from (if you care to). Here is how: in: /etc/apache2/apache2.conf (or whereever your apache configuration sits) change the "Logformat" option to the following: LogFormat "%h %l %u %t \"%r\" %>s %O \"%{Referer}i\" \"%{User-Agent}i\"" combined and then use option: CustomLog /var/log/apache2/access_log combined (or whatever log path you want).
- DEinspanjer 15y agoNot sure if I'd jump straight to malarky, but I definitely think it is very plausible that a scamming outfit is running the pages through translate, either as an obfuscation or actual translation.
- z92 15y agoThat sounds very plausible.
- powertower 15y ago> it's just a run-of-the-mill scammer scamming and using google's name A scammer selling a Google service for which their is no affiliate program? I wouldn't file this one away due to having a Google crawler on an IP address that’s on the same B block (that's like having the same car brand, not the same make/model)... An IP address that's not even related to the original investigation, but to some anecdote at the very end of the story. We need more info about the service being sold, and how it's being sold, who's the billing party, etc.
- linguistbreaker 15y agoThose Kenyan businesses don't represent enough money to be worth bungling into a crushing PR nightmare. That would be stupid, and stupid is the one thing that I know to be absent at Google. I predict that Google will get to the bottom of this very quickly in order to protect their name.
- deleted 15y ago[deleted]
- ak2012 15y agoGoogle monopoly hard at work, its only a matter of time till we start viewing Google as the next Microsoft.
- majani 15y agoThe articles on the web are wrongly portraying Mocality as the little startup that could. Truth is, Mocality is a division of a 14 billion dollar media giant called Naspers. Not saying that Google is right or anything, but I think some people are getting fired up because they view this as a David vs. Goliath story, and it really isn't.
- kenrik 15y ago"Do no evil" There is a saying in spanish that roughly translates "beware of unrequested affirmations" I think it applies here..
- wangweij 15y agoIf Google has become so huge that theoretically they cannot enforce the "Do No Evil" motto throughout the whole company, they can remove that motto and publicly admit they are just the same as any other one.
- TerraHertz 15y agoOK, now this is just exploring an idea about WHY this might have been done. Rough details: Google doesn't develop business web sites, but the callers were offering that service. Obtaining their business contact database, and misrepresenting themselves, in a very un-Google way. Since early November 2011. And the call operation switched to India when spotted. The businesses being called were all in Kenya. KENYA - now why does that ring a bell? Google admits it happened, but is vague about who did it. "a team of people working on a Google project" Hmmm... You'd think if there was a clear relationship that Google could admit to, they would have. I smell something a bit more intense than mere bad business choices. How about this: Suppose you were a current US President, who (for whatever reason) very very strongly desired to eliminate (or 'modify') a specific piece of paper held at the Coast Province General Hospital, Kenya. A birth certificate, from 1961. This one: http://everist.org/pics/Obama_bc/lucas_Obama_bc.jpg http://everist.org/pics/Obama_bc/lucas_Obama_bc.jpg Someone comes up with the bright idea to offer a document digitizing and cloud archiving service to the hospital. Just to get hands-on for that one piece of paper. But as cover... you'd need something much more general. Like offering web hosting to all businesses in Kenya. Comes with document scanning at low low prices! You can trust us, we’re GOOGLE! And we are associates of your widely liked Mocality. So why now? Because finally a lawsuit about Obama's eligibility established legal standing and made it to the supreme court. Document discovery begins. Stuff's about to hit the ventilators... 20120113 VERY QUIETLY OBAMA’S CITIZENSHIP CASE REACHES THE SUPREME COURT http://www.pakalertpress.com/2012/01/09/very-quietly-obamas-citizenship-case-reaches-the-supreme-court/ http://www.pakalertpress.com/2012/01/09/very-quietly-obamas-... That and other cases have been working their way through slowly. Takes months, and someone maybe saw a need and activated some emergency contingency plans. Just a thought. There’s always a reason, and it's often not the most obvious one. Why would any actual Google team, even rogue, offer web services Google simply does not do?