Microsoft has been forced into an embarrassing apology after complaints that it was using the earthquake in Japan to promote its Bing search engine.
The company originally posted a message on its Bing Twitter account which read: “For every retweet @bing will give $1 to Japan quake victims, up to $100K”.
But the post sparked a barrage of complaints from “Surely you shouldn’t use such a tragedy for self promotion. Have some respect for the suffering of others” and “Just send them the money publicity whore” to “That’s Microsoft I guess, always trying to appear to be good while being douche bags.”
The uproar forced the company to post a new message just six hours later, which reads: “We apologize the tweet was negatively perceived. Intent was to provide an easy way for people to help Japan. We have donated $100K.”
