Google fires Kenya boss over Mocality

2012-01-31 09:18

Google's Nelson Mattos has said that the company has taken action over the Mocality scandal. (Duncan Alfreds, News24)

Duncan Alfreds

Cape Town - Cape Town - Google has fired a senior official in Kenya after reports that the search giant had been illegally accessing the Mocality database.

Google conducted an investigation and Nairobitech reported that the head of Google operations in that country, Olga Arara-Kimani, has been fired.

Mocality had conducted a sting operation that revealed Google employees had been undermining its business in Kenya by accessing its database and contacting clients, claiming to work with Mocality.

Google promised that action would be taken.

"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," Nelson Mattos, Google Vice-President for Product and Engineering, Europe and Emerging Markets said when the scandal was revealed.

Google apologised, but said that it would investigate the conduct of its unit and in addition to Arara-Kimani, it has been reported that a staff member at the Zurich office has also been fired.

Google released a brief statement that did not elaborate on all the details of what happened.

"We've taken appropriate action with the people involved and made changes in our operations to ensure this doesn't occur again," Mattos said.


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