Google's evil SAcampaign

Issue # 112 February, 2009

Local online ad marketing agency Entelligence is to take its battle with international behemoth Google to another level. It has filed an appeal to the Competition Tribunal against last year's Competition Commission ruling which rejected Entelligence's charge that Google is abusing its dominance of the South African market.

The Competition Commission did concede that Google was trying to steal one of Entelligence’s major clients, Yellow Pages, but said this did not amount to anti-competitive behaviour. A curious twist to the tale: Yellow Pages wasn’t interested in doing business directly with Google.

Google was in no mood to listen: later, in a conversation with Entelligence CEO Sean Riley, Masie said: “I do not respect this agreement” and “Google intends servicing this customer directly”.

All Google's revenues go offshore. Which says plenty about their lack of interest in African development.

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Reader's comments

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Submitted by : Don on 2009-02-01 14:09:05

What's that old adage that goes something like "Power Corrupts, Absolute power etc etc" which in the end amounts to pure egotistic greed. Don
Editor's Note

"Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men." By historian and moralist, John Emerich Edward Dalberg Acton, first Baron Acton (1834â€“1902), who was otherwise known simply as Lord Acton, expressed this opinion in a letter to Bishop Mandell Creighton in 1887.



Submitted by : Pete on 2009-02-03 11:37:43

"forgoe some short-term gainsâ€ indeed? Never will a yankee company do so. They will pay lip service to the "noble ideal", they will market it and PR it, but actually DO it? Never. I have not used Google to search for some time now. They are not the only players (and don't tell me yes, but . . . I won't use them, full stop). I use altavista.com quite happily, thank you. (And when Google buy them, I'll move on again . . ) For the same reasons, I use Firefox and Thunderbird, not Microsoft's browser or email. Bonus: Better, much safer surfing, much less danger of virusses, etc

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