4 ms·

Um...yes, it is. Take any 10k+ employee company, can you as a company guarantee that no employer will "do no evil"? That's impossible. I'm not trying to defend

Um...yes, it is. Take any 10k+ employee company, can you as a company guarantee that no employer will "do no evil"? That's impossible. I'm not trying to defend Google here, but just saying that an act made by an employee at a company is equal to a given strategy by the same company is just ludicrous.

y0ghur7_xxx 15y ago
The scam was going on for months. It's not something that some employee did without telling anyone, hidden away in some office. You can't possibly contact all those businesses during work hours at google without some boss asking you what you are working on and what you are doing. And if that is possible inside google, imho something is very wrong.
- michaelcampbell 15y ago
  > It's not something that some employee did without telling anyone, hidden away in some office. Awesome; since you seem to have more facts than anyone else in this emotion-laden thread, please lay them out for us. Perhaps you're right; I simply don't know, but since you seem to have evidence of this, I'm sure Google legal would love to see it.
  - y0ghur7_xxx 15y ago
    > since you seem to have more facts than anyone I don't. I just repeated what Nelson Mattos wrote on his blog. "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."
- VMG 15y ago
  I find it very hard to believe that anyone significant knew about this at Google. Do you really think that they are in such dire straits that they have to scam Africans for profit?
  - tripzilch 15y ago
    It went on for months, even if they outsourced a team that just happened to interpret its orders "creatively", having such a scam operate under your watch, while you're paying them, is--to put it mildy--quite the oversight.
    - mbell 15y ago
      >It went on for months Months is an incredibly short period of time for a large organization. Especially when considering a small, probably low priority group. A large organization isn't like a startup, for a small low priority group the feedback loop isn't daily, its at best weekly and quite possibly longer even monthly (and gets longer as you go up the corporate ladder). What you may identify about a groups activities in a couple weeks at a small company can easily take months in a large company.
    - methodin 15y ago
      You clearly have never worked with an outsourced team. Shit like this can happen with the utmost of ease - unless Google has an internal time constantly involved in the actual area of the outsourced team.
  - WettowelReactor 15y ago
    I would be curious what your thoughts are on Murdoch and the News of the World scandal. In that case everyone seems to think that Murdoch new or should have known yet in this case Google execs get a pass?
    - VMG 15y ago
      Different risk/reward ratios. I'm much more certain that they aren't stupid than I am certain that they aren't evil.
DanBC 15y ago
There's some slight differences between "Google as a company is responsible for the actions, even the unknown unsanctioned actions, of their employees" and "Google is responsible, and they did it deliberately." The former is recognised in some laws in some jurisdictions (off the top of my head: In England a company director is responsible for the piracy of their employees during company time, even if the director doesn't know about it and didn't ask for it.) In my opinion it's fine to say that Google is responsible, even if they didn't know about it. Maybe they need to start improving their governance procedures, especially in cultures where bribery and corruption are rampant. "Don't be evil" should include "don't be evil, even if evil is usual in the region we're working in".

y0ghur7_xxx 15y ago

The scam was going on for months. It's not something that some employee did without telling anyone, hidden away in some office. You can't possibly contact all those businesses during work hours at google without some boss asking you what you are working on and what you are doing. And if that is possible inside google, imho something is very wrong.

michaelcampbell 15y ago
> It's not something that some employee did without telling anyone, hidden away in some office. Awesome; since you seem to have more facts than anyone else in this emotion-laden thread, please lay them out for us. Perhaps you're right; I simply don't know, but since you seem to have evidence of this, I'm sure Google legal would love to see it.
- y0ghur7_xxx 15y ago
  > since you seem to have more facts than anyone I don't. I just repeated what Nelson Mattos wrote on his blog. "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."
VMG 15y ago
I find it very hard to believe that anyone significant knew about this at Google. Do you really think that they are in such dire straits that they have to scam Africans for profit?
- tripzilch 15y ago
  It went on for months, even if they outsourced a team that just happened to interpret its orders "creatively", having such a scam operate under your watch, while you're paying them, is--to put it mildy--quite the oversight.
  - mbell 15y ago
    >It went on for months Months is an incredibly short period of time for a large organization. Especially when considering a small, probably low priority group. A large organization isn't like a startup, for a small low priority group the feedback loop isn't daily, its at best weekly and quite possibly longer even monthly (and gets longer as you go up the corporate ladder). What you may identify about a groups activities in a couple weeks at a small company can easily take months in a large company.
  - methodin 15y ago
    You clearly have never worked with an outsourced team. Shit like this can happen with the utmost of ease - unless Google has an internal time constantly involved in the actual area of the outsourced team.
- WettowelReactor 15y ago
  I would be curious what your thoughts are on Murdoch and the News of the World scandal. In that case everyone seems to think that Murdoch new or should have known yet in this case Google execs get a pass?
  - VMG 15y ago
    Different risk/reward ratios. I'm much more certain that they aren't stupid than I am certain that they aren't evil.

DanBC 15y ago

There's some slight differences between "Google as a company is responsible for the actions, even the unknown unsanctioned actions, of their employees" and "Google is responsible, and they did it deliberately." The former is recognised in some laws in some jurisdictions (off the top of my head: In England a company director is responsible for the piracy of their employees during company time, even if the director doesn't know about it and didn't ask for it.) In my opinion it's fine to say that Google is responsible, even if they didn't know about it. Maybe they need to start improving their governance procedures, especially in cultures where bribery and corruption are rampant. "Don't be evil" should include "don't be evil, even if evil is usual in the region we're working in".