It makes me believe that it is Google, though I still find the monthly hosting charge thing a bit strange, because I can't find any mention of that on their site.

Apart from the false information about Mocality, does Google using their directory to do these cold calls actually violate Mocality's Terms of Use?

Really curious to see Google's response. Joe Muchera (head of Google Kenya) says he's looking into it. That not being an immediate dismissal makes me think it is indeed a Google initiative, though one that went off the rails.

I think that transcript essentially proves that it wasn't Google. Everything he says about the program is completely wrong. I'll just pick out the things that are indisputably wrong, there is more that I would argue is wrong but may be viewed differently by others. You've already mentioned the false information about Mocality that the caller uses, so I don't need to repeat that.

"[The domain will be] ww.your business.CO.KE" No, it will be www.your business.kbo.co.ke. This is something very important, you get a subdomain of Google's Kenyan Business Online site kbo.co.ke.

"Twenty one days. We’re going to develop the website within twenty one days" No. Google's KBO does not develop the websites themselves, they provide a "Business Sitebuilder tool" that allows you to do it yourself.

"XXXXX dot XXXXX at gmail dot com." This should be @google.com not @gmail.com.

"and also we go on facebook. People who log into facebook can see the clothes you are selling." No. Google's KBO does not do anything with Facebook.

"When someone is on facebook, they’ll see your ad there." Again, no. Google is not giving you advertising space on Facebook.

"Ok, there’s a small fee for hosting of Ksh. 200 per month. [...] Only that for hosting. You know hosting is different from developing." No, there is no hosting fee. The only possible fee is an optional one if you want your own domain and it isn't 200 per month.

There's more but I think that should give you the general idea. Given just this transcript and comparing it to the details of Google's program at kbo.co.ke I would say that this caller is definitely not working for Google but is rather a scammer. In fact, in this transcript the caller basically walks through the steps needed to use the Business Sitebuilder tool. This explains how the business who didn't agree to the thing would end up with a site anyway, the scammer did it while on the phone. Now, I haven't considered the IP logs, but my best guess for that is that it is coming from Google Translate as discussed elsewhere.

Edit: I should clarify. I am not certain that Google was not involved with this, it's more that I am convinced that that particular caller wasn't working for Google. While I am unconvinced that these callers worked for Google, there is some rather damning evidence.

We get SEO and "host your website" scam calls now and again (maybe 2 or 3 times a month) - since my boss went to an "SEO & Hosting workshop" sigh - and it sounds a lot like some of them.

How so? I read it and it looked like one of those crappy scams? How does this strike you as a legitimate Google employee?

When we started this investigation, I thought that we’d catch a rogue call-centre employee, point out to Google that they were violating our Terms and conditions (sections 9.12 and 9.17, amongst others), someone would get a slap on the wrist, and life would continue.

The post says that, -if- Google is doing what someone pretending to be Google is apparently doing, then Google would be violating its own T&C's.

Please read carefully so as not to turn a hypothetical statement into an inaccurate fact.

> -if- Google is doing what someone pretending to be Google is apparently doing

We don't know if it was Google or someone pretending to be Google. However, to make jontas's statement neutral:

> The post mentions that the alleged Google team was violating their T&Cs:

I bet it's pretty common everywhere, I know it happens in Sweden regularly, although the scam companies are shut down pretty quickly over here.

You haven't worked with their sales team then. Sales people (Commissionus Salesdroidicus :-) live and breath to win, and winning means creating leads, converting leads, and booking business.

Hopefully the folks inside Google who believe in transparency and doing business competitively but honestly, will be able to pressure the teams who endorse this sort of activity.

The next step will be the more interesting one. Do they they stop scraping Mocality? Do they enter into a dialog to actually partner with them? Or do they start using Tor nodes to scrape the site and stop telling people they are from Google?

When that next chapter plays out the true nature of the business is revealed.

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! ;-)