August 25th, 2009
Microsoft and their Photoshop diversity policy
Microsoft are once again showing their fantastic Photoshopping skills. Through producing two identical pages for their Business Productivity infrastructure, they copied and pasted (and translated) the US page to Polish, but in the process they Photoshopped a man of Afro-Caribbean ethnicity to a Caucasian businessman.
In my way of thinking, they could well have done this because the ethnic makeup of Poland is almost entirely Caucasian Polish citizens, so the image appeals more to the culture. But through this they have opened themselves up to ridicule and possibly accusations of discrimination.
Nevertheless, on a simple level we can at least laugh at this as one of Microsoft’s more obvious and public cock-ups. And as Elliot Harrison of Neowin pointed out (as he is sat next to me at the time of writing; he is my best friend after all), they could have taken the effort to Photoshop the hand according to the corresponding skin tone.
You can visit the Microsoft US page and the Microsoft Poland page, and play a quick game of spot the difference.
Zack Whittaker, the youngest in the ZDNet network, is a British student at the University of Kent, Canterbury, where he studies BA (Hons) Criminology and Social Policy. His insight into the next-generation is unique and first-hand, sharing his knowledge of the here and now but more so what's next and how to get there.
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| 08/25/09
