On the Web9 website, the company states that it offers affordable and simple advertising, and calls itself the “Google of Africa”.<\/p>\n
Looking at the website’s registry details, the name of the registrant is Shingi Mushipe.<\/p>\n
Mushipe is also listed as the CEO of Web9 on LinkedIn and Twitter.<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n While searching for Mushipe on Google does not turn up much, typing the Web9 CEO’s name<\/strong><\/a> into his own platform returns a confusing mix of biography, search engine logos, and attractive female models.<\/p>\n After finding contact information for Mushipe and sending through questions about Web9 and its emails, the CEO was happy to talk to MyBroadband about his operation.<\/p>\n Mushipe said that the Web9 search engine was founded on 24 November 2013 and that it is not the first company to use direct email marketing for advertising purposes.<\/p>\n Responding to queries about the emails being classified as spam, Mushipe said they were more affordable and efficient than conventional advertising.<\/p>\n “Yes these are marketing emails,” Mushipe said.<\/p>\n “In the past we have spent thousands of rands advertising on expensive American platforms like Google Ads, Facebook Ads, and Twitter Ads with limited results.”<\/p>\n “We have found that the most direct, affordable, efficient, measurable, and scalable marketing platform is email.”<\/p>\n We then asked the Web9 CEO why the name of the email sender was often disguised as a major company and not clearly stated as Web9.<\/p>\n “Some of our marketing emails do have Web9 as the sender. The random company names are used simply as a publicity stunt and to increase click and open rate on the emails,” Mushipe said.<\/p>\n “To date we have not received any complaints from any major companies except a small trademark issue with Google in 2015 which was resolved.”<\/p>\n Mushipe added that Web9 uses “automated systems” to collect email addresses from all over the Internet for its mailing list.<\/p>\n “Every email address is automatically assigned with an advertising voucher number and as soon as the voucher is used to activate an advert the emails will stop immediately,” he said.<\/p>\n He also added that people can ask for their email addresses to be removed through the Ask Web9 page<\/strong><\/a>.<\/p>\n The “small trademark issue” Mushipe referred took place after\u00a0Web9 was founded in 2013. At the time, the platform was named “Goofrica” – a portmanteau of the words “Google” and “Africa”.<\/p>\n Mushipe began to advertise the platform using the terms “Google”, “Google Africa”, and “Goofrica”, but this did not last long, with Google accusing the company of trademark infringement in 2015.<\/p>\n Google demanded that Mushipe refrain from using the Goofrica domain and branding, and Mushipe subsequently renamed his search engine to Web9.<\/p>\n “I will no longer use the term ‘Google’ or ‘Google Africa’ in a misleading manner on our new website, marketing materials, social media or any other place,” Mushipe told Google.<\/p>\n Despite this, Web9 has labelled its mass “marketing emails” as being sent from “Google” and “Google Ads” over the past few months to encourage more recipients to click through.<\/p>\n In his communication with Google, Mushipe admitted to being “a bit naughty” in the choice of his name and apologised, adding that he was grateful the company’s motto was “Don’t be evil”.<\/p>\n Mushipe explained to MyBroadband that Web9 was a unique and locally-produced platform.<\/p>\n “Web9 is the first and only search engine to be built in Africa for the world. We like to think of it as the Google of Africa,” he said.<\/p>\n “What makes it different is that we have a unique algorithm which we use to rank website pages and more importantly we offer a low-cost advertising platform which has just over 6,000 registered advertisers.”<\/p>\n “We are not an evil organisation and we are not hiding,” Mushipe added.<\/p>\n Many people around the country will be familiar with emails about a locally-produced search engine named Web9.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":341028,"featured_media":304150,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_sma_x_autopost_status":"idle","_sma_x_autopost_error":"","_sma_x_post_id":"","_sma_facebook_post_id":"","_sma_instagram_post_id":"","_sma_threads_post_id":"","_sma_x_attempts":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[7695,35,58720,415,58718],"class_list":["post-304146","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-internet","tag-email","tag-headline","tag-mushipe","tag-spam","tag-web9"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/304146"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/341028"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=304146"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/304146\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":304394,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/304146\/revisions\/304394"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/304150"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=304146"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=304146"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=304146"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"Shingi](\"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/04\/Shingi-Mushipe-results.jpg\")
<\/a><\/p>\nThe man behind Web9<\/h3>\n
A “small trademark issue”<\/h3>\n
Web9<\/h3>\n
Now read: Why you should not download pirated software in South Africa<\/a><\/h3>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"