[elorant]

How can this be a PR piece? For starters, there isn't even a product. And most important, this is Microsoft, not some up and coming start-up that's craving for exposure. Microsoft is a behemoth when it comes to ad spending. If they had a product to market they wouldn't need some native advertising article, they'd go in guns blazing.

[cperciva]

Microsoft is actively rebranding itself from "evil megacorporation" to "innovative doer of good".

[curiousDog]

That's pretty much every corporation these days though. Facebook, Google, Amazon starting a permanent homeless shelter etc.

[badminton1]

Like "Microsoft <3 Linux" and "Microsoft <3 Open Source".

Except that Microsoft used to collect 2 billion dollars in patents from Linux based product vendors. They totally "<3" open source.

[badminton1]

To the downvoters: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halloween_documents

[NoPiece]

The story is a Microsoft blog post - it is definitionally PR. Still a good story though.