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Microsoft is putting more money into an initiative that provides technology and computer training to educators and students around the world -- acknowledging that it also wants to help its own business, in the long run, by getting more of them to use its products early on.

In Berlin on Wednesday, Bill Gates is expected to announce a five-year, $235.5 million investment in the company's "Partners in Learning" program. The company is expanding the program beyond K-12 to colleges and universities. Microsoft says the new money will bring its total investment in the program to around $500 million over 10 years.

Microsoft says the goal is to promote educational and economic opportunities, and collaboration among educators, in areas with limited access to technology. The initiative is involved in more than 100 countries. In the long run, the company also has its own interests in mind, said Orlando Ayala, senior vice president of a Microsoft group that is aiming to double the number of PC users worldwide by 2015.

"It is very important that some of these strategies that have, in the past, been characterized as pure citizenship get really married with opportunity down the road. That opportunity hopefully comes to everybody. In the case of Microsoft, yeah, absolutely, hopefully down the road we expect that, if people build the skills in our software, they'll continue to use it, they will be consumers," he said. "I think that's OK."

The company is trying to fend off the Linux operating system and other open-source technologies in developing nations and the rest of the world. One of the most prominent initiatives for computing in emerging markets, the One Laptop Per Child program, uses Linux but has been working with Microsoft to offer Windows XP, as well.

Last year, the Microsoft "Unlimited Potential" group launched a $3 suite of Windows, Office and other programs for government programs that distribute subsidized computers to students in developing nations. Programs in Russia, Libya and Mexico have so far received the suite. Microsoft is working in those cases with Intel, which recently went through a high-profile falling out with the One Laptop Per Child initiative.

Microsoft says more than 90 million educators, students and policy-makers have been affected by the Partners in Learning program in some way since its launch in 2003. With the latest investment, the company says it wants to triple that number.