(Note that I didn't say that was my agenda for the company, nor that Microsoft would necessarily be successful in those moves, only that those are the keys to its future in Microsoft's own view.)

The best path, I was suggesting, is for Microsoft to offer to give up, as part of its negotiations with the DOJ, on three key fronts:

• End its contractual control of PC original equipment manufacturers, or OEMs, over what the Windows "desktop" includes on their PCs, what it includes, and how it looks; and

• End its forced bundling of Internet Explorer with Windows, separating the Explorer code from the underlying versions of Windows itself; and

• Stop trying to keep OEMs from selling desktop-startup-screen real estate to other companies.

These aren't exactly trivial give-ups ... but they're issues that would be unlikely to survive a second trial, so it would be smart to surrender on them now. And because Internet Explorer has overwhelmingly beaten Netscape Navigator in the browser wars -- and Navigator itself is now a clearly inferior product, used by fewer people every day -- Microsoft is unlikely to lose many customers, if any, if Internet Explorer isn't right there in front of users at first boot.

Or so I said.

So I'm sitting here, and Microsoft drops a bombshell, announcing that it's going to take three steps on its own:

• End its contractual control of PC OEMs over what the Windows "desktop" includes on their PCs, what it includes, and how it looks; and

• End its forced bundling of Internet Explorer with Windows, separating the Explorer code from the underlying versions of Windows itself; and

• Stop trying to keep OEMs from selling desktop-startup-screen real estate to other companies.

Uhh ... OK. Sound familiar?

Oh, if only I'd filed that column a few hours earlier. On the other hand, if I had, I'd probably have Securities and Exchange Commission investigators on my doorstep today...

Either I'm a smart guy, or Microsoft has been tapping my phone and brain waves -- or more likely, those were pretty obvious give-ups.

The big question, though: Why surrender now, on its own initiative, rather than use those changes as bargaining chips at the table?

Is it possible that Microsoft's counsel have been having some private talks with Justice Department people, maybe with the angry state attorneys general too, and Big Redmond sees this move as a generous opening step, an effort to move the negotiations to a more civil plane from the beginning ... and thus, probably, to conclusion more quickly?

That's my bet.

Incidentally, I should say that at least the third point -- admittedly, related to the first one, but not exactly the same thing -- really is a kind of surrender for Microsoft. For example, its recent war with America Online (AOL:NYSE - news - commentary) over whether AOL will be included on the Windows XP desktop, which ended with no deal, is now effectively over.

The PC OEMs will now be free, one assumes, to do their own deals with AOL.

Which means Microsoft has given up on its hope of establishing more broadly and more quickly its Windows Media Player as a replacement for RealNetworks' (RNWK:Nasdaq - news - commentary) player.

There's another loss here for Microsoft, too: It has been plugging its new, "icon-free" look for the Windows XP desktop. Over the past five years, the Windows desktop has gotten hopelessly cluttered -- and many users (including me) make it even worse by adding our own sets of icon shortcuts to favorite programs and Web destinations.

Now that "clean look" will probably be out the window -- no pun intended -- at least on machines shipped from the major PC OEMs, which are likely to see these changes as revenue opportunities, as they sell auto-installed icons to PC-industry companies.

In late trading Wednesday, Microsoft closed up $2.02, at $66.50. In after-hours trading, it ran up further, to about $70.50.

In another announcement late Wednesday, Microsoft said it was booking a total of $2.6 billion in losses in its fourth quarter from investments that went sour. However, sales were sufficiently strong in the quarter, ended June 30, that revenue will be reported at $6.5 billion to $6.6 billion, rather than the earlier estimate of $6.3 billion to $6.5 billion.

The company says its earnings will still come in about 41 cents or 42 cents for the quarter, meeting earlier estimates.

Finally, in case you missed it, RealMoney.com's Herb Greenberg made a good point late Wednesday in our online Columnist Conversation. With Microsoft's recent blackmailing (there is no nicer word for their behavior on this) of its business customers to shift to a new licensing arrangement, lest they be clobbered this fall with outrageous license-upgrade charges, Herb wonders just how much revenue was thus pulled forward into the fourth quarter from scared customers.