A very selective response, designed in two ways to pretend the issue wasn’t as serious as it seemed = spin.

(I gather from your website that you used to work at Google. Seems pertinent!)

This implies anyone could have done it and the degree to using this free information is mostly google being resourceful.

It’s one thing to make a site that scrapes this Kenyan db and lifts it into their own (which goog basically does automatically).  But it’s another to directly poach customers and appear to be in an agreement with the competitor while lying about business practices.

The spin is the downplay, the slap in the face that they’re using publicly available information, and nothing more.

“We’re aware that a company in Kenya has accused us of using some of their publicly available customer data without permission. We are investigating the matter and will have more information as soon as possible.”

I don’t see any “spin” in that statement.