There's a difference between saying "let's wait to see what Google has to say, this could be something else." and saying "This is clearly bullshit." Is Cory Doctorow's reputation such that he should be so quickly dismissed?
The last paragraph from the report [emphasis mine]:
The conclusion is hard to escape: Google -- or people working on its behalf, with its knowledge and cooperation -- took the numbers of tens of thousands of Kenyan businesses from Mocality's database, then fraudulently solicited money from them by claiming to be in a joint venture with Mocality. This seems to me to be outright criminal activity, and Google has a lot of explaining to do.
The paragraph from a Google VP [emphasis mine]:
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.
Looks like the conclusion Cory found hard to escape was exactly the right conclusion.
Is Cory Doctorow's reputation such that he should be so quickly dismissed?
With all due respect to Doctorow, many on HN know quite a lot more about how the internet works than he does.
I know at least two ways to make arbitrary requests from a Google IP that haven't been mentioned on the comments to this story, and I don't claim any mad hackerz skillz.
I think the evidence pointed towards Google being responsible, and that's what I said. But I, and many others said to wait before drawing a final conclusion. I think that that's a reasonable approach.
If I wasn't clear in my post, I completely agree that it was reasonable to wait before drawing a final conclusion. My objection was to the outright dismissal of the claims by the top comment. And, for me, Doctorow's completely nailing the conclusion was impressive.
The last paragraph from the report [emphasis mine]:
The conclusion is hard to escape: Google -- or people working on its behalf, with its knowledge and cooperation -- took the numbers of tens of thousands of Kenyan businesses from Mocality's database, then fraudulently solicited money from them by claiming to be in a joint venture with Mocality. This seems to me to be outright criminal activity, and Google has a lot of explaining to do.
The paragraph from a Google VP [emphasis mine]:
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.
Looks like the conclusion Cory found hard to escape was exactly the right conclusion.