off. And given that the EU is only now getting around to the issue of Microsoft bundling a Web browser with its operating system, any big compunctions about Microhoo probably wouldn't have set in until 2015. So Microsoft and Yahoo probably could have cleared that hurdle, but not quickly, and there are other details to reckon with, so let's suppose that the deal closed in August. Yahoo shareholders would have received a chunk of Microsoft shares and a wad of money that looks princely in comparison with the present $11.74 value of their Yahoo shares. Sure, there would be some bellyaching, but all those institutional investors who were publicly griping about Yahoo's management would have been mollified -- especially because revisionist history or not, the economy in August 2008 already was well on its way downhill, and Yahoo's stock likely wouldn't look so great. So next up would have been the big challenge: integration, which, as former Sun Chief Executive Scott McNealy famously described it regarding the merger of Hewlett-Packard and Compaq Computer, is like watching two garbage trucks collide in slow motion. Executives fond of competing pet projects would be pitted against each other, tooting their horns and trying to fend off others' with candid assessments -- and Yahoo already had enough internally competing projects on its own, as documented in Brad Garlinghouse's Peanut Butter Manifesto . But Microsoft actually saw the HP-Compaq merger as an example of how to make Microhoo happen: pick a product and go with