As Tom reported on last week, Microsoft Corp.'s (NASDAQ: MSFT) purchase of aQuantive and Google Inc's (NASDAQ: GOOG) recent purchase of DoubleClick could make one think that the dot-com buying bubble is back.

Together, these two acquisitions represent a little over $9 billion in an advertising medium that has grown rapidly in the last five years. Online advertising has swelled to become a major medium that is, increasingly, taking ad dollars out of traditional media streams like television, print and radio.

Was Microsoft's aQuantive purchase a desperate effort for the software giant to play "catch up" to Google in the red-hot Internet advertising arena? While I doubt that it was a move of desperation, it does signal that Microsoft feels -- like Google -- that the ad world hasn't seen anything like the near-future potential of the Internet in terms of return on ad spend (ROAS). Unlike TV, radio and newspaper advertising, the sheer possibility of tracking customer purchases, tastes, clicks and finely-woven customer behavior detail has never before been as available as it is now.

Google saw the writing on the wall, so to speak, long before the others, and its vision has been rewarded by making it the major player in this new universe. Microsoft has professed that it will be concentrating more and more in this arena to supplement its income from software. In other words, it wants a piece of the pie Google is currently enjoying (along with Yahoo! and AOL). Although some MSFT shareholders fear that Microsoft overpaid for aQuantive (look at the company's fundamentals among other things -- and the share premium that was paid for the company), I'm not of that mind. Was the $6 billion purchase a chess move or a "me too" move from Ole' Softie? My guess? A chess move -- even though it does not appear that way to some.

(Disclosure: I own MSFT shares as of 5-22-07)