The past few days has been a bit of a hurricane for NIgeria’s most successful blogger, Linda Ikeji as her online asset was taken down by Google after a complaint from one Mr. Aye Dee, a friend turned foe.
According to information posted by Linda, Aye Dee whose full name is Mukhtar Alexander Dan’Iyan confessed to reporting her to Google because she did not reply his emails and messages for over a year.
Excerpts of a recent conversation between Linda and Aye Dee were posted on Linda’s blog by the blogger and it depicted a deeply troubled Mukhtar who was afraid and angry Linda was deliberately ignoring him and decided to take matters into his own hand by terminating her blog.
Linda Ikeji summarized the episode thus, “You see, my good friend and biggest supporter Alex 1976AD told me he was Mr Aye Dee. The same guy who started this.
The guy that got Google to shut down my blog. It wasn’t about plagiarism or copyright infringement.
“Mr dear friend Alex 1976AD aka Mr Aye Dee wanted to be back in my life and he felt the best way to get my attention again was to shut down a blog I’ve slaved for almost eight years. And because he knew what to do and had the resources, he succeeded.”
In the exposé, Linda said Google let him succeed by not checking with her before yanking her blog off the internet.
Google however restored her blog yesterday but not after Linda had already threatened to dump their blogspot hosting service and take her business elsewhere.
Her words, “I’ve been in touch with the people at Google…some of them say they may return the blog but I’m no longer interested. If they can’t protect me from people like Alex/Aye Dee, then there’s no point continuing to do business with them. I’m going to continue blogging from my own domain name – lindaikejionline.com. (cyber-squatters have taken everything else)”.
It seems Linda is happy to have her old domain with Google back,although it is expected that she will move her business somewhere she can feel more secure.