Over the weekend there was a big kerfuffle following a tweet posted by Bing where they were willing to donate $1 for every retweet of their original message up to a maximum of $100,000. In the mess that followed the social media dickwads got their panties all up in a bunch and accused Microsoft, and Bing, of trying to profit – marketing wise – off of the disaster.

Holden Page had a great post here earlier calling out this stupidity but this mess, that as Paul O’Flaherty pointed out in today’s Daily Brief show could have been handled better, hasn’t stopped Microsoft continuing to support the relief effort for Japan.

Even as the fallout of the Bing retweet effort is still resonating, with bing giving the $100,000 anyway, Microsoft has announced that they will be donating and additional $250,000 along with $1.5 million worth of free software. This is also just a part of Microsoft’s overall response to the disaster that has devastated Japan.

In addition to the money and software Microsoft, which operates a data center and employs 2,500 in Japan, is making its cloud computing service available to responders on the ground.

Just as a side note, if Microsoft is getting slammed for its Bing effort, why don’t people get upset with company’s like Dawn who ship cases upon cases of their dish detergent to areas hit my massive oil spills, or how about Tide for sending semi trailers of self-contained washing machines and Tide products to places like New Orleans and then use those ‘good deeds’ in advertising campaigns?

Oh wait…. I get it … it’s Microsoft.

Related posts:

  1. Bing Not Matching Donations Through RT’s Is a Loss, Not a Win
  2. In Japanese earthquake aftermath, Microsoft still accounting for workers
  3. Daily Brief – Microsoft & Google: Strange Bedfellows
  4. Minimalist poster showing Japan’s pain and a way to help
  5. Microsoft and Windows Round-up – 09.06.2010