Microsoft Cries Foul At Stolen Interface

Microsoft Expo’s project leader, Garry Wiseman, wrote a blog post earlier today criticizing Sina, one of China’s largest search engines, saying “Sina.com steals our design and graphics”.

The post highlights the similar look and feel of Sina’s new classifieds site to a previous release of Expo, including the identical color scheme and a pushpin image that appears to have been flat out stolen:

Sina.com steals our design and graphics
We were recently made aware (thanks to a comment on our blog by Phillipe) of a new classifieds site in China that had not only lifted our previous user interface’s look & feel, but also directly copied some of our graphics (note the cool pushpin graphic that our designer Becky created). The shocking thing is that the website in question is owned by one of China’s largest search engines called Sina.com. Couldn’t they afford to hire a designer?

Anyway, take a look for yourself at the images I’ve attached to this blog entry. Alternatively, check out the screenshots of our previous UI and then visit: http://post.sina.com.cn/v3_index.php

Let’s just say that I’m looking forward to our China launch..

- Garry

Decide for yourself if Sina ripped of Microsoft – the side by side screen shots are below and larger views are available on Garry’s post. There are definitely similarities, although the irony of Microsoft crying foul over a stolen user interface will not be lost on some readers.

A quick note: I know Garry well and like what he’s done at Expo over the last year or so on the project. Our previous coverage is here, here and here.