For viewers just tuning in, so far this week on “As the Tiny-Incestuous-Petty-Juvenile-Digital World Turns,” Yahoo (YHOO) has been plenty busy:

An AOL (TWX) mashup deal!

A Google (GOOG) search-ad partnership!

Even–cue the trumpets!!!–the late entrance of that man-about-Silicon-Valley from Web 1.0, Frank Quattrone, working for Google, which is helping Yahoo on AOL (and, fun, snake-eating-itself fact: as a banker, Quattrone worked for Yahoo when it was contemplating buying eBay).

This is so deliciously sweet, in terms of geek soap opera, that I fear I may get a major cavity soon.

But like any hungry viewer, I want more! What, what, what could be the next twist and turn?

Here are three of my more creative brainstorms:

1. Reunite the dream team in United States v. Microsoft to scare the living daylights out of Steve Ballmer.

It will be like an antitrust version of “I Know What You Did Last Summer.” I am almost certain that Joel Klein, Janet Reno, David Boies and the ever-irascible Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson (the latter two pictured here) still are capable of giving Microsoft (MSFT) the willies.

2. If you want make former Yahoo merger partner and now Microsoft merger parter News Corp.’s (NWS) Rupert Murdoch squirm, there’s nothing like adding yet another wizened media mogul to the mix. My No. 1 choice would be some kind of hopelessly complex mashup with the properties of Sumner Redstone (pictured here), who controls both CBS (CBS) and Viacom (VIA). I am thinking something that includes SpongeBob SquarePants and those irksome girls from “The Hills” (also pictured here) and, say, Katie Couric.

3. Of course, the most surefire way to get more money from Microsoft: Hire Mark Zuckerberg (pictured here). So far, the 23-year-old wunderkind and his team at Facebook (well played, Owen Van Natta, well played!) have been the only ones able to get Microsoft to fork over an ungodly amount of money for a chance to own a small part of a hope and a dream and not-a-very-impressive bottom line.

If Zuckerberg can get a $15 billion valuation by putting up only SuperPokes and news feeds as collateral, I would find what he is drinking and get me some for myself.

Please see this disclosure related to me and Google.

Jackson’s preferred plan for enforcement never was implemented. But his warning is worth noting today in light of Google’s claims that the company’s Windows Vista operating system violates the settlement that ultimately resolved the government’s antitrust case against Microsoft in 2002. It seems Google is the author of a once-confidential antitrust complaint that alleges Vista’s search feature undermines competing desktop search programs. Microsoft’s “current approach with Vista desktop search violates the consent decree and limits consumer choice,” Google spokesman Ricardo Reyes told the Seattle Post Intelligencer. “The search boxes built throughout Vista are hardwired to Microsoft’s own desktop search product, with no way for users to choose an alternate provider from these visible search access points. Likewise, Vista makes it impractical to turn off Microsoft’s search index.”

An ugly allegation and one that would certainly be cause for concern if it weren’t so … questionable. Microsoft’s desktop-search software can be disabled–in a number of ways. In fact, Google could probably turn it off as part of the Google Desktop Search installation process if it chose to. The Justice Department’s top antitrust official surely noted that in his recent memo to state prosecutors urging them to reject Google’s complaint. Of course, he was once vice chairman of the antitrust department of a law firm that represents Microsoft. Neat little coincidence, that–eh?

So what’s really going on here? Competition by litigation, my friends. Competition by litigation.