Mod parent up. People that regard this as racist have probably never been to Poland or any other Eastern European country. For historical reasons, you will very rarely see black or Asian people in any of those countries. Having an ad with a black person is just not believable. Personally if I saw a local add like that in my home country it would immediately say "ah, this is obviously a US add, so the product is probably very US centric", simply because the ad shows a black person. This is not racist, it is just a fact. Americans probably don't notice it, but for "political correctness" reasons many American publications always made sure that every group of people they showed always had a mix of races/types of people. If you ever watched a cheap teen movie that has a story about some group of kids, the group would always have some white kids, one of them being fat, at least one Asian guy and at least one black guy. Not having this combination of races/types of people in the movie would be considered politically incorrect in the US. Seeing a group of people of mixed races is an everyday and normal thing. Seeing a group of people of mixed races in Eastern Europe is a rare occurrence, so a picture with a black person will immediately tell you that the picture was most probably made outside of the country. Imagine an ad showing a couple driving to work in a car - a Volga Coupe. Would this ad be believable to you if it was shown in the US? No, because you would never see that car driving down an American freeway. What the ad does show is that Microsoft is cheap. Instead of taking a new photo, adopted to the local market, they just photoshoped an existing one - badly.