Source

Microsoft doctored a stock image to appeal to its Polish customers by literally whitewashing the color from one of the photo's subjects. While US web visitors were greeted by 3 racially diverse business people, Polish visitors saw one man replaced by a Caucasian doppelganger. And it was so poorly done we wondered if it was a joke. The Polish site now bears the original US image, but the damage has been done. Said CNET's Ina Fried, "Although Microsoft would be within reason to use a different photo on its Polish site--the country is very racially homogeneous--the company is coming under significant criticism."

Well I'm not adverse to changing advertisements etc to appeal to different markets. Some things simply work better in some countries etc. However if you're going to do such things at least do it well so its not so obvious.

Yeah, this isn't a big deal. Seems like an excuse to bash MS as usual.

ROFL.

I don't see the point by changing it though.

We do this all the time.. it doesn't matter who we photoshop out of a picture.. if it doesn't sell he is she is gone.. I can see in this case that they wanted a younger person sitting in the middle instead of the older man.. it's not about Racism..

And using stockphoto's is waaay cheaper then to hire a photographer and 3 models to shoot 1 photo.. it's even a 72dpi picture.. that's about 1 dollar to buy such a stockphoto.. while hiring all 4 of them for 2 hour would at least be $800

I always did say that something wasn't quite right about microsoft.

As much as I dislike Microsoft, this is no big deal.

They could at least have changed the color of his hand. This photoshopped image is like everything else Microsoft does. Done half assed.

You know... There are no black people in Poland.

Here, in Middle-Europe, these ethnically diverse photos would look painfully american.