On Friday, February 1, 2008, Microsoft unexpectedly announced a massive $44.6 billion offer to purchase ailing online giant Yahoo. Now Paul Thurrott's SuperSite for Windows has posted an analysis of Microsoft's blockbuster offer for Yahoo. Here's an excerpt:

Finally, Microsoft is Getting Aggressive. It's too early to tell if Microsoft's surprisingly aggressive bid for Yahoo will be seen as the beginning of a corporate turnaround or the final death knell of a struggling dinosaur, but consider this: While far too many people have criticized Microsoft's behavior in the past, the truth is that the software giant has a responsibility to shareholders to increase the value of the company. This is done via competition, and by defeating those that would steal your customers, market share, and revenues. When a Microsoft executive says he wants to "cut off the air supply" of a competitor, for example, this isn't a bad thing unless the subsequent actions of the company are illegal: In fact, it's arguably what a shareholder would want to hear from a person helping run the company. Business isn't about morality, it's about winning legally. That said, Microsoft was clearly humbled by its antitrust troubles around the globe during the past decade, and acted in what I think are bizarre ways, betraying it as a company that was clearly losing its edge.

Consider the following: Why would Microsoft spend five years (so far) dickering over technical documentation that would allow competitors to make products that better interoperate with Microsoft's workgroup server products but then turn around and quickly agree to every single change that competitors demanded in the buildup to Windows Vista? Think about this for a second. On the one hand, you have competitors seeking to interoperate with a non-dominant product. And on the other, you have competitors seeking to weaken your most dominant product of all. You fight voraciously to prevent the former, but you roll over and play dead on the latter? Really? That's ridiculous, and if I were a Microsoft shareholder, I'd be outraged. As a Windows user, I am outraged: Vista has been compromised by the desires of Microsoft's competitors, and will be further compromised by the release of SP1.

This hostile bid for Yahoo suggests that Microsoft is ready to start being more aggressive again. And that's a good thing, really, for users of its products and the hundreds of millions of people that rely on Microsoft every day.

This is Steve Ballmer's Microsoft. Sure, he's been CEO for 8 years, but Steve Ballmer has always lived in the shadow of his predecessor and former Harvard buddy Bill Gates. Even though Gates apparently "gave his blessing" to the Yahoo bid, this deal has Ballmer's aggressive nature written all over it. Ballmer is a fighter, willing to do what it takes to win. And this proves it, as the Yahoo deal is as much an admission of past failure as it is strategic for the future. I find it somewhat fascinating that Microsoft never uttered the word "Google" in its promotional materials about this bid, in its letter to Yahoo, or in a conference call with the press on Friday: This is clearly Ballmer's will at work.