Google Explains why it deleted Linda Ikeji’s blog, and Aye Dee backs down

FACE-OFF: Mr Aye Dee and Linda Ikeji

Google‘s Manager for Communications and Public Affairs, Anglo-Phone West Africa, Taiwo Kolade-Ogunlade, has explain why linda Ikeji’s blog has to be pulled down.

Speaking to the Punch newspaper today, Mr. Kolade-Ogunlade said:

“Google as an organisation takes issues of copyright seriously and belongs to a group of digital companies that respect copyrights. Copyright is a big deal and this is why you can’t just go and pick up another person’s intellectual property or content and lay claim to its ownership.

“That is why we have copyright guidance. I don’t know if Linda picked up any content and I don’t know what content is the bone of contention-neither have I looked into the complaints personally.”

He further explained: “it is not a case of witch-hunting and has nothing to do with Linda Ikeji’s personality or anyone else because there is a process, and irrespective of who you are in the world, that process would apply to you.”

Mr. Aye Dee, whose real name is Mukhtar Dan’Iyan, revealed he had to get Google to delete Linda’s blog because his email messages to Linda Ikeji about her copyright infringement and plagiarism were ignored.

“(I) filed a formal [Digital Copyright Millenium Act] DMCA complaint to Google which hosted her site,” he told Premium Times in an interview earlier today.

“One complaint is not enough. But safe to assume when Google looked through other examples of unauthorised IP usage and other IP owners filing complaints, it all added up.”

Mukhtar is no longer interested in pursuing the case any further, and believes that, in spite of what is now a major setback for the famous blogger, Linda will come out stronger and better. He tweeted to his 4011 Twitter followers yesterday:

Personally, I believe @LindaIkeji will bounce back stronger than ever before. She'll become a model of how New Media should really be done.

— Mr. Aye Dee (@MrAyeDee) October 8, 2014

Yesterday, 8 October 2014 XCLUSIVE Magazine reported that Linda Ikeji‘s blog was pulled down by Google because she lifted numerous contents and images from sources such as TMZ, Getty images, Daily Mail UK, and AMA Sports without their permission, or without adequate acknowledgments.

For blowing the whistle on her and pursuing Linda’s plagiarism charge with so much vigour, the whistleblower, Mr. Dan’Iyan, received a death threat from an upset fan of Linda Ikeji, who told him in a tweet to “leave @lindaikeji alone” or he would “DIE a PAINFUL DEATH!”

We also revealed how the mega-rich Nigerian blogger quickly created a temporary website and implored her 415k twitter followers (she now has 417k twitter followers) to “please read there for now until I sort this out.”

In a post on her blog before it was pulled down, Linda talked tough, boasting to Mr Aye Dee “and all the others talking” that “YOU are not enough! You can’t bring a good woman down”