Microsoft Corp on Thursday kicked off a program to preach its technology gospel to black and Hispanic small business owners, saying they are an untapped but potentially significant market. The world's top software giant would hold 85 free workshops in 14 cities from Los Angeles to Philadelphia aimed at showing minority entrepreneurs how to use software to be more efficient, as well as how to build a Web site to put their business online. Many of the estimated 630,000 African-American and 775,000 Hispanic businesses with fewer than 10 employees used computers, but only 2 percent and 6 percent respectively used the Internet as a business tool, Microsoft said.
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