Google blunder over D-Day doodle
bbc.com
bbc.com
That has consequences when so many of their "customers" (or as many note, we're really Google's products :-) venerate these sorts of things, and take it as disrespect. Heck, I have to wonder if they thought they were being deliciously transgressive by featuring a Japanese Go player, although it sounds like this was corrected before it hit the US, which is 5 hours or more behind the U.K.
It's something that Bing gets right, and while Microsoft doesn't seem to be a threat, I seriously doubt it's going to help Google in the long term.