Submission + - Google Employees Caught Up Lying To Businesses (techcrunch.com)
SharkLaser writes: Looks like Google is facing an another PR disaster, as an Kenyan startup Mocality, which operatores the country's largest online business directory, has caught Google employees lying to business owners. "Not long after Google helped kickstart a program to get Kenyan businesses online, the startup suddenly started fielding calls from Kenyan business owners with questions about a supposed partnership / joint-venture Mocality had set up with the Internet search and advertising giant". As the number of calls rose, Mocality got suspicious and set up a traffic monitoring system with a smart sting operation. They noticed that certain IP address was accessing all the business details on their site, so they started serving that IP address numbers that lead to Mocality's call centre instead of the real business owners. Soon Mocality found out that Google Kenya employees and Indian call centre employees working for Google were calling up businesses they found on Mocality and tried to get them to sign up for a competing product by lying about a supposed partnership with Mocality and spreading misinformation about Mocality's business model. On some of the calls Google claimed that Mocality is engaging in bait-and-switch practices to try and charge businesses later for their listings. Mocality says it has never and will never charge for listings.
