strategically speaking, YES! they are not just promoting a tool among developers/researchers . it's a whole business approach they are taking. But personally I think they are late to the party. Google, Micro$oft, Amazon.. and all the other open source tools ( Python, R...) are offering a better , more flexible and versatile solutions to the public. I think they were a bit greedy and selfish, because they could have put this challenge on Kaggle for example, and gotten a much higher momentum (where a high concentration of Data Scientists and enthusiasts are doing interesting stuff)..