|
#1
12-22-2009, 08:51 AM
|
|||
|
|||
8 times when IT cos said sorry
 Indiatimes Infotech Think its a rarity when a corporate behemoth issues a public apology? Not in 2009 at least! The year saw several big IT giants issue regret letters after public outcry. Internet search giant Google had to apologise more than once in 2009, Microsoft too had to say sorry on charges of racial discrimination. The list included many other big names too. Here's where and why technology companies issued public apology in 2009. 
|
|
#2
12-22-2009, 08:53 AM
|
|||
|
|||
Gmail goes offline, Google red faced
 The year 2009 saw Google's Gmail continue its march on the growth track. However, as Gmail grew, so seemed to be the woes for its users. The year saw Gmail services getting disrupted several times, sometimes these outages were regional while on other occasions global. Consequently, the search giant Google had to often extend apology to its sea of users for the inconvenience suffered. The latest outage occurred in September. According to the company, the outage saw Gmail going offline for a “majority” of its email users, including its paid consumers. Earlier in May, millions of people were cut off from Google's search engine, e-mail and other online services after too much traffic was routed through computers in Asia. About 14 per cent of Google's users encountered problems with the Internet's No. 1 search engine. The frequent outages made analysts wonder if Gmail is getting too unwieldy for the search giant to manage.
|
|
#3
12-22-2009, 08:54 AM
|
|||
|
|||
Microsoft repents 'photo editing'
 Software giant Microsoft found itself at the end of a racism row forcing it to tender an apology. The software leader apparently altered a photo in a company advertisement on its website to change the race of one of the people shown in the picture. A photo on the company's US website showed two men, one Asian and one black, and a white woman seated at a conference room table. However, on the website of Microsoft's Polish business unit, the black man's head was replaced with that of a white man. The colour of his hand remained unchanged. The photo editing sparked massive criticism online. Issuing an apology Microsoft spokesperson Lou Gellos said, "We apologise and are in the process of pulling down the image." Some bloggers said Poland's ethnic homogeneity may have played a role in changing the photo.
|
|
#4
12-22-2009, 08:58 AM
|
|||
|
|||
Google sorry again, this time for first lady
 Internet search giant's image results recently created a stir when it was pointed out that the image results for US first lady Michelle Obama showed a racist image in the top results. The image search result which showed Michelle Obama as a monkey women was later removed by Google. Google also apologised for the image. In a statement, the company said, "Sometimes Google search results from the Internet can include disturbing content, even from innocuous queries." "We assure you that the views expressed by such sites are not in any way endorsed by Google," the statement added. Google also ran several advertisements to explain the appearance of racist and anti-Semitic material in its search results.
|
|
#5
12-22-2009, 09:01 AM
|
|||
|
|||
Vista a mistake: Microsoft CEO
 Over the years, Vista has witnessed criticism from several quarters. However, for the first time the operating system was laughed off by none other than the company's CEO. Ahead of the launch of its new operating system Windows 7 in October, Microsoft laughed at Windows Vista which according to its CEO tarnished the company's reputation. At an event, Microsoft chief executive Steve Ballmer said that the company never recovered from the poor performance of Vista. Ballmer was qouted as saying, "We got some uneven reception when [Vista] first launched in large part because we made some design decisions to improve security at the expense of compatibility. I don't think from a word-of-mouth perspective we ever recovered from that."
|
