• Microsoft Apologizes for Photo Goof-up

    Microsoft Apologizes for Photo Goof-up

    Techtree News Staff, Aug 27, 2009 1804 hrs IST

    Altering race of individual in marketing site lands Microsoft in trouble

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Microsoft recently landed itself in a soup for bad image editing in a photo on company's Business Productivity website for U.S. and for Poland. An apparent stock photo featuring one white, one black and one Asian business folk is put on the Microsoft Productivity Software's U.S. site. The company's same product site for Poland had the same image but the face of the black person in the photo was edited and replaced with that of a white person. However, the photo editor did a lousy job since the hand in the individual remains the same in both photos.

Microsoft unnecessarily got involved in acts of changing race of a person and thereby faced criticism from the people on Twitter and several other websites where the incident has been reported.

Nevertheless, Microsoft apologized stating, "Marketing site photo mistake - sincere apologies - we're in the process of taking down the image" through an update via its official Twitter account.

Microsoft needs to be careful with its photo-editing techniques since it might affect company's business and image.

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Discussion Board
(5) Comments
Anonymous
,California, on Aug 30, 2009 01:26 PM
Well, what a big deal? To be honest, as an Asian American, I have been there and done that. One has to accept that if you are living in a society predominated by certain people, you cannot always expect everything is 100% equal. So, if you try to fix everything, dream it. For example, when I was in Taiwan, Hong Kong, they hired poorer countries such as Philiphine, Vietnam, and other foreign country people to do labor, house work, etc. Those people did't expect to get the high level job, assuming they been there for long and understood the culture and language. They got to give it to the native and even you can say for political reasons. It is human nature no matter where you go. As far as I concern, if you see someone treats you 70% or more right, you should be happy.
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Harvey Wharfiel
,Boston, on Aug 27, 2009 08:19 PM
Wow...a misleading headline ! That wasn't a "Goof" - it was a deliberate effort to hide the original ad !
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JobsLiver
,Cupertino, on Aug 27, 2009 07:56 PM
They "faced hot waters"? WTF? I think you just coined a new term.. now if I only knew what it meant. You should have been a writer for The Sopranos
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Jayanth Paraki
,Bangalore, on Aug 27, 2009 07:44 PM
Much ado about nothing....
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Paul Wallace
,Indianapolis, on Aug 27, 2009 06:15 PM
Whomever wrote this article is clearly missing the fact that the only thing that did actually change is the head and possibly some color replacement for luminosity effects, and maybe some *slight* skewing of the body. Oh and that there's a Mac in the picture ;)
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