The Australian Newspaper (part of the News Corp empire) has outed the strange business practices of Mark Tucker, Google Australia’s only Australian director as part of a piece on Google Street View and privacy.
According to Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC, Australia’s SEC) documents, Tucker maintains six different versions of himself, complete with varying birthdate, for his various corporate investments:
According to data filed with the Australian Securities and Investments Commission, six different Mark Tuckers live at the Mona Vale address. All were born in the Sydney beachside suburb of Manly – but on slightly different dates.
According to ASIC records one Mr Tucker was born on January 21, 1953, one was born on January 13, 1953, another born on January 25, 1953.
Another Mr Tucker – who is both the director and secretary of a company called Bahama Acres Holding Company – is registered as living at the same address but was born on January 12, 1953.
A Mark Tucker living at the Mona Vale address – who is currently the director of the Tucker Family Superannuation Co – was born on January 12, 1963, while another Mr Tucker at the same address was born on March 12, 1953.
Tucker claimed that the varying dates were “typographical errors,” but 6 typographical errors? A company involved in the Bahama’s would automatically raise eyebrows, but six different records is more interesting considering that data matching for tax purposes in Australia usually relies on matching details of directors with a heavy emphasis on a directors date of birth.
There may be nothing untowards here, and we wouldn’t suggest that there is, but someone in Mountain View will be calling Australia shortly, if they haven’t already. There may also be an ASIC or ATO (Australian Tax Office) investigation into Tucker’s business affairs and that’s not going to be a good look for a Google Director.
Australian Google is well
Google Director is Tucker’s business affairs
IT’S SMELLS ALL TOO FISHY… it’s practically impossible to have made so many “typos” while typing a birthdate unless a faulty microsoft keyboard was being used by a 2 year old…..
house for $410K in Australia in 1990 is worth how much today?
good for him ..no one will know the real date ..can have many birthday parties as he wants ..lol
http://bloggersmosaic.com
Alex
)
where that house is: probably $1-1.5m, if not more (and given the exchange rate, nearly the same in USD
im not suprised. This is a common practice followed by most Indian entrepreneurs
As much as this makes me frown I’ve got to say that I’m sure News Corp is going to use their usual media tactics to dig as deep as they can to find the “evil” that Google promises it won’t do.
I say watch for a bigger “breaking news” Goog story coming from FOX News next week.
Just remind yourself to give it as much merit as you would any other breaking news from FOX.
Yeah, when you put yourself out with “do no evil”, you’re setting yourself up for hypocrisy. Executives at companies with so much success so quickly often think they can do no wrong and get a god complex. Thus, abuse follows success quite often.
Google has fabulous search and advertising technology. Their android phone adventure is already looking pitiful, and the more they expand beyond search and advertising, the quicker they’ll fall.
I sympathize.
strategis.ic.gc.ca/cgi-bin/sc_mrksv/corpdir/dataOnline/corpns_re?company_select=6460658
Here in my Canadian corporation, my name is spelled correctly
http://kepler.s...er=200809410214
Here in the US LLC that I am the main member of. My name was typed in incorrectly from the form.
I still have a copy of the form and my name was entered correctly to the state. So somebody from the state of California made a typo. That happens. That’s not my fault.
I can imagine some people in the bureaus that digitize forms made some errors.
7 errors? If they made one, they can make 6 for sure. I’ve had this happen to me at least 20 times with Canadian and US govt agents mistyping information into systems from form data. And the form data was typed not printed.
@9, Nice try, go back to ramming your organization (Y1) into the ground.
As I was trying to say, when you mistype a zero on a return it’s the end of the world, but when the govt does it, it’s always ok and you get blamed and wind up on techcrunch with illicit adjectives. Life’s not very fair, unless you work for the govt.
@9, 11:
nice company name…
as for your comment about making 7 mistakes, do some math. 7 mistakes on different fields is a distinct, yet still rare, possibility. 7 “mistakes” on the birthday is nearly impossible
His only mistake was not anonymizing his personas enough. He clearly should have built six properly different identities — including different addresses, birthdates, and names.
Although it’s important to pay the taxes, it’s becoming more important every day to maintain distance between one’s professional and private life. As public records become more expansive and easier to access (legally or not) the only way to maintain this separation will be to maintain different legal personas.
This guy is clearly ahead of the curve, and the practice should be encouraged.
This is a common practice in some countries
it’s strange
sent from: fav.or.it [FID258840]
@14 , he probably has if you consider that these are just the ones found so far. Who to say there are not another 6 addresses with 6 more tuckers
Meh. Typical murdoch gutter press. Seems that someone has incorrectly transcribed his handwritten birthdate – the dates are all similar. anyway, who cares?
@chris:
– atleast http://www.orjii.com/ is a better name than BeerCo … heh ;/
– on the other hand having your navigation links all MailTo: links is kinda 90’s? not web3.0 … you can’t even define it; much less produce it.
*the first link lands on a landing godaddy page? why do you even give out that site yet?
Maybe there really is no Mark Tucker. He is a digital construct, a virtual person who Google created as a composite of various people.
so now Google wants to see your 1040 before making an offer. So Serg will now hold you responsible for the bad choices you made at 14 and if you have taken to many deduction in your life.
this is really weird.. some person making holes in the same plate he eats
Would not want to buy him presents all of the time for his birthdays
Curious, where this will lead to.. happy birth birth birth birth day, misters Tucker..
Great article. Can you believe the audacity of some people?
This is just plain wrong. I hope Google does something about this.
What relevance does this article have to TechCrunch’s readers? Nothing to see here folks…
@Joe T
I can assure you Mark Tucker is very real.
Who the hell does this guy think he is?
Typographical errors happen all the time. Duncan Riley’s father used to tell him he was a typographical error.
Suppose this is a common practice in India and some other countries, as readers suggest, but what is its purpose then?
very strange !