Yesterday's announcement that Dell would be joining the Microsoft-Novell pact is proof positive that Microsoft is playing the same game it always has - extend, embrace and then extinguish.

Notice that Dell wasn't exactly prominent in the announcement of the deal - most of the talking was done by Microsoft, in itself a reminder that whether you are a big player or not in the tech industry, you had better do as the boys in Redmond say. No getting too much out of line.

Just a couple of months back, Dell was involved in what many saw as some kind of lovefest with the Linux community, claiming it was trying to gauge what the public really wants. It's one of those touchy-feely marketing BS exercises.

Out of this PR exercise, two suggestions emerged at the top of the list - Linux on Dell machines at the point of sale and OpenOffice.org as an alternative to Microsoft Office.

Dell initially did a fandance to try and evade what the people had said; nobody expected that it would announce sometime down the road that it would sell Ubuntu on some of its PCs and laptops. That announcement had many people dancing in the streets.

Now it is obvious that Microsoft allowed Dell to sell Ubuntu only on condition that it also sold SUSE. More than any commercial benefit which pushing SUSE brings, what Microsoft is counting on is the market force that it brings to bear on consumers. There is all the more reason for people to avoid Red Hat now and buy a SUSE box.

The logic would be: we are selling SUSE for one reason; Dell is doing the same for the same reason. Two big industry players, seemingly behind a Linux distribution. What more would the average half-educated CIO need as an argument to buy SUSE?

Of course, Dell will tell you, parrot-like, that it also sells Red Hat and has an agreement with that company in place for a long time. Wonderful. Selling SUSE as well is just spreading the love, I guess.