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And Here comes the ugliness we expected. Fresh off their failure to pick up Yahoo in a soft and fluffy low-ball buyout, Microsoft is putting down the wiffle bat and hauling out the iron pipe.

Microsoft has now hired Innisfree M&A Inc., a proxy solicitation firm, to help oust Yahoo’s 10-member board. The entire board is up for re-election this year and apparently Microsoft could spend $20 million to $30 million in an effort to wrench control away from the board and go all hostile.

Would not be surprising if both sides are simply sabre-rattling before settling on a new price, but Yahoo has made a fairly pathetic show at feigning interest in Microsoft’s initial offer. “We don’t need you, Microstupid… we’ve got our good friend AOL who might buy us out. They’ve been doing this stuff for a long, LONG time and are a powerhouse in the industry. Remember a little something called dial-up modems! Huh? Yeah… you remember dial-up modems all right. I know you do.”

Long ago on a misty island nestled far away in the rough and merciless sea roamed a vast network of enormous and viscous dinosaurs known as Microsaurus Rex. Nothing got in their way. They ate what they wanted. They trampled what they didn’t. Life was good.

You know where this is going, of course. Like the faint and unconvincing acting of Jack Black had us believing that the entire crew was shocked and horrified to find something more frightening than the band of T-Rex, so have the executives in Redmond come to a single and inevitable conclusion. Google Kong can kick our ass.

With the news this morning that Microsoft has tendered a $44.6 billion dollar offer to buy Yahoo, the network is ablaze with questions. What will it mean for the consumer? What will happen to MSN? Seems low, will someone else step in? What happens to AT&T now that it’s got the Mac guy offering to split a dime bag with him while the Windows guy wants to do his taxes?

Microsoft is clearly concerned and has been for some time. This deal has been in the works for well over a year, and it goes a long way to keeping them in step with Google’s Android announcement. Many have been predicting for months that the battle would eventually move off of the computer screens and onto our phones.

Yahoo’s very friendly relationship with SBC/AT&T only strengthens the belief that this deal is an attempt to dig even deeper into the mobile user base as Google readies a brigade of sharpened shovels. Extend the thought process even further and it would not be surprising to see a Microsoft buyout of another Yahoo / AT&T bedfellow, Tivo.

Honestly, though, it’s hard to imagine that combining Yahoo with Microsoft with AT&T can be considered a truly formidable foe to the massive and muscular ape that is Google. Hell, AT&T is still struggling with the SBC merger long after it was completed.

Long-term, however, it will without a doubt lead the way to more affordable or free services for the fleeing victims caught in the middle. For anyone who enjoys the free benefits of the Google Maps vs. Microsoft Maps battle, there will almost certainly be more of that to come as the battling beasts claw at each other for the right to consume we who are the tiny scrambling snacks with bank accounts.

Okay, summer break’s over. Back to Work.

First up, a Microsoft punishment might stick? We’ve all read the article. Apparently a European Union court dismissed Microsoft’s appeal against an EU antitrust order that ordered it to share communications code with rivals and sell a copy of Windows without Media Player and upheld the $689 million fine.

“The court observes that it is beyond dispute that in consequence of the tying consumers are unable to acquire the Windows operating system without simultaneously acquiring Windows Media Player,” it said.

Microsoft has a final appeals route to the EU high court, but what does this mean for the Wild Bill and the Monopoly Bunch? Possibly alot. The money is obviously meaningless as the Microsoft compound fuels the cavernous coding sweatshops in the winter with furnaces burning 20’s and 50’s. But the media player split could mean future overseas releases of Vista might need to exclude media player as an application. However, since it is “integrated” into the operating system, according to Microsoft, that may simply mean that the front-end will be absent, and download from an update only after the OS is activated. That would leave the courts to then determine if it’s legal to grab it afterwards.

This is speculation, of course. Truth is, Microsoft may simply find an easier loophole or continue to shell out the fines. Either way, you can bet on two things:

1. It will likely not affect any U.S. releases.
2. Microsoft is well on their way to worming those features even deeper into the fleshy code for future legal excuses.

The next time you need to write an email… expect it to happen inside of “Microsoft Media Text Content Player Composer Manager 11.0″.

“No, really. Our deal with Microsoft will really help the open-source community. Really! Look how much Microsoft has helped the Java cause!”

That is, essentially, what Xandros CEO Andreas Typaldos has frantically claimed, flanked by massive military brutes wearing black shades and windows-logo cufflinks. Under a new deal announced Monday, Xandros and Microsoft agreed to a broad set of joint technology and marketing initiatives. The companies plan to develop software that will link Xandros’ System Management tools with Microsoft’s System Center with plans to give IT departments an easier way to manage their combined environments.

More troubling, however, is the fact that Microsoft will extend “patent covenants” to Xandros’ Linux customers, waving its right to sue them for using what the company claims is Microsoft technology embedded in Linux. “For users, it’s a way of saying that if sparks fly between Linux and Microsoft, they have insurance,” said Typaldos.

Obviously, the open-source community is pissed. This “deal with the devil” plan all but puts another nail in the argument that Linux does not use Microsoft Patents, as has been argued in the Novell case. In response, they are re-working the GPL license to prevent future deals. Under the third version of the General Public License, expected to be published in final form this month by the Free Software Foundation, similar deals that were not inked by March 28 are forbidden. As a result, it would appear that Xandros will not be allowed to distribute open source code licensed under GPLv3 because of its relationship with Microsoft.

Typaldos doesn’t seem worried, stating “If you are a businessperson, you can’t worry about every eventuality.”

Thus the commercialization of Open Source code has taken another leap forward, screwing everything good about it in the process. No great surprise, I suppose. But that doesn’t make it any easier to accept.

Nothing beats watching two giant space Krackens go toe-to-toe in a battle for the galaxy. And now we get to watch it happen live as Google fixes it’s single eye, rimmed in fire, on the Blue Towers of Microsoft with their newest subscription-based Office suite.

Google has been offering a free version of its online software suite called Google Apps for the past six months. More than 100,000 small businesses and hundreds of universities nationwide are using the free service, Google said.

The fee-based version, Google Apps Premier Edition, includes five times more e-mail storage — 10 gigabytes per e-mail box — as well as a guarantee that all services will be available 99.9 percent of the time with around-the-clock technical support.

Google also is adding mobile access to e-mail accounts through the BlackBerry devices that tether workers to their offices.

So what happens when two of the largest software companies known to mankind fail at winning the entire market and can’t buy the other out like they’re used to doing? Temporarily cheap or free software may be in the works! That always seems to be the next logical step.

As a way of thanking their many loyal customers for choosing the XBOX360 over the less-available systems during the holiday season, Microsoft has decided to give a gift to each and every owner this new year. A large, gift-wrapped notice that their new Christmas toy is slow, defective, and officially obsolete.

That’s right… XBOX360 Version 2 is in the works and nearing production. Same game system… same games and controllers… but new processor that runs cooler than the original. It’s also rumored that the new version, codenamed Zypher, will have a larger hardrive and built-in HD DVD… most likely to compete with Sony’s PS3.

But the most welcomed new addition is support for true digital HD video. The current XBOX360 only supports outputs of RCA, S-Video, Component, or VGA… all of which are still analog-based forms of video. They provide excellent image quality… but the new version will have native support for HDMI, which combines digital audio and video into the same cable, and is common on most HD TV’s.

One can’t help but wonder if this was Microsoft’s plan all along. Throw out what we can to get a jump on Sony… then fix everything after the Holidays. Screw our existing customer base, they’ll get over it. We’re Microsoft! When we tell them to get over it… they will. Because we’re Microsoft, dammit!

Well, Bill? Enjoy you new extra notch up the “Evil Company” ladder. More to come, I’m sure.

Stand back…give them room!

Microsoft is “Innovating” again.

Hoping to tap the explosive popularity of online video sharing by joining startups and major Internet rivals with its own video service, Microsoft has announced their newset service, “Soapbox on MSN Video”. This service will let Internet users watch and post funny videos, rate or comment on them and share favorites by e-mailing them or linking them to their personal Web pages or blogs.

Rob Bennett, general manager of MSN’s entertainment and video services unit, acknowledged that Silicon Valley startup YouTube Inc. has an early lead, having already attracted tens of millions of users in the year and a half since it launched. Rivals Google Inc., Yahoo Inc. and Time Warner Inc.’s AOL also have similar offerings.

But Microsoft believes there is “still plenty of room to innovate, and go beyond what I would say most services provide … just sort of the basics, a very kind of primitive experience that is not that engaging,” Bennett said. “It’s not that fun to use. It just gets the job done.”

There you go. The “I” word. Straight from the horse’s mouthpiece. Microsoft once again “innovates” an idea from someone else, hooks up a cash IV, and calls it their own. I wonder how long this guy is going to keep his job, considering he’s not really clear as to which service he’s describing as “primitive” and “not that engaging”. His speech left me with the impression that the new Microsoft Soapbox won’t be “fun to use”. Poor guy. He’ll be watching the skies for the Microsoft Logo Black Helicopters all afternoon.

Microsoft Corp.’s long-delayed upgrade of its flagship Windows operating system, Microsoft Vista, will cost the same as comparable packages of the previous version, the company said this week.

Microsoft Vista Basic : $199
Just like XP. Only prettier.

Microsoft Vista Premium : $239
Just like Media Center Edition. Except it works this time.

Microsoft Vista Business : $299
Includes all of the options that XP Professional has, including new security, data protection options, and frequent crashing. Blue screen is optional.

Microsoft Vista Ultimate : $399
Includes features from Vista Business and Vista Premium, with upgraded profit margin support.

Microsoft Vista Grande : $465
Includes features of Vista Basic with a full-bodied blend of 30% Vista Business and 28% Vista Premium. Served in an attractive collector’s mug.

Microsoft Vista Double Uber Ultimate Frappe Professional: Special Edition
This one is actually just Windows Millennium Edition re-packaged in a Vista Box. Microsoft hopes the excitement around Vista will help them offload several hundred thousand units of the vastly unpopular operating system. Price is not currently set, but the package is rumored to be had for 2 bucks and a cheese sandwich.

In a posting to the Mozilla development planning discussion group, the head of Microsoft’s open source software lab has extended an offer to Mozilla Corp. to help ensure the Firefox browser and Thunderbird e-mail client will run under Windows Vista.

Representatives from Mozilla noted quietly to each other, “… Why is Bill Gates holding the door for us and smiling like that. It’s really creeping me out!”

I can appreciate that Bill’s Army would like to test as much popular software as possible on the new Windows Vista Operating system, but this has more stink on it than a burned tuna casserole. “Come on in, guys! Just put your jackets and software anywhere, it’s all safe here. No one’s going to go through anything or anything!”

Firefox currently munches on about 15% share of the browser market, and I see no reason why Micrsoft would want to help them unless they had another motive. Especially considering how popular the Mozilla products are among those who have the skill to pry Microsoft IE from their system. After all, IE is an “integral part of the operating system and can’t be separated”. Microsoft lawyers are funny, funny people.