promoting? or trying to ride the wave?

Please turn the table, it's not Microsoft promoting jobs for PHP developers, it's Microsoft trying to avoid losing ground to other competitors.

PHP is the most popular web programming language on the planet. PHP programmers are not as miserable as this interview tries to picture and they are a large part (if not the largest) of the IT business community.

In fact how an enterprise chooses a platform is the key to see this clearly. Every enterprise will choose the platform which has more support possibility meaning with more human resources available to support the chosen platform. And hello?!! What's the largest web developers community?

Microsoft is not trying to bring PHP programmers into enterprises. It's trying to not lose anymore enterprises to competitors.

I think if Microsoft is going to promote any healthy thing for IT industry it should quit making operating system and specially web browsers. Web designers know what I mean.

Wow! I am glad that you understood it. There are few around who doesn't.