Well, this hasn’t been a good year for Yahoo! but at least it is trying to tackle one obstacle at a time. Having thwarted Microsoft’s overtures, Yahoo made peace with Carl Icahn to give 3/11 board seats.

This doesn’t mean troubles are over yet. A lot depends on how Google-Yahoo pact is treated by the regulators. It will be hard for them to ignore the threat of a monopoly staring them in their face but stranger things have happened.

As for MS, it must be scratching its head figuring out its next move. Whatever the outcome, the MS-Yahoo saga is headed towards Business School case studies.