Business
Google’s improper actions suggest that Africa has ideas worth stealing
Google has admitted people working for it ‘improperly’ accessed Kenyan rival Mocality’s database.
Last week, Google was forced to admit that its Kenyan unit was “improperly” using data from a local startup (the victim, Mocality, had assembled a valuable online and mobile-phone-accessible directory of local businesses; Google was allegedly accessing Mocality’s database and soliciting its customers to buy websites set up by Google).
Mocality Kenya like its other variants across Africa, is a database of Kenyan businesses including their addresses, phone numbers and websites.
Mocality’s database is built via crowdsourcing. The company pays Kenyans who contribute to the database via Kenya’s mobile money payment service m-pesa.
In a blog post by CEO of Mocality Kenya, Stefan Magdaliski Mocality explained how Google Kenya staff had been accessing its database and calling up businesses offering them websites on Google’s Getting Kenyan Businesses Online [GKBO]. At first Mocality tracked the IP of these connections and figured out a particular version of Google Chrome that hadn’t been launched yet was used.
