2. Get ready for the heat—and a return visit

Google will keep telling you it wants to make that deal happen. But don't be surprised when things suddenly start moving a lot more slowly, as your new "friends" in Mountain View begin demonstrating a heightened sensitivity to their own antitrust vulnerabilities.

The moderates hope your stock price drops only to $20 when Microsoft walks. Even if they're right, tepid earnings over the next few quarters will drag your stock into the mid-teens. When that happens, Microsoft will come right back after you.

Assume that this has become completely personal with them, and that they will not even bother to ring the doorbell this time. Instead, they'll go straight to a hostile offer that carries a premium of 20 percent or less.

That's why you must…

3. Deliver

All of that will be essential to buying time. But it will not sustain you for the longer haul, and you'll need to think "transformational." I know you want to stay involved, and so selling out-right is not an option. Thus, there's only one sensible deal of substance out there for you.

4. Absorb AOL

Insist the name of the new company will be "Yahoo Online." Not only will that allow you to euthanize that annoying exclamation point at the end of your name, but it will also make you hero to many by finally killing the name "AOL."

Take a role like "executive chairman," and limit your engagement to high-level strategy and special projects. Make Randy Falco the C.E.O., sending a clear signal that the business will be run with a clinical view of the future, not a moistened eye on the past.

And oh, speaking of Ballmer, if you wake with him doing that monkey dance on your lawn tomorrow morning, then that probably means that I'm wrong about them retreating. If so, that's going to require an entirely different Rescue Memo.

Good luck.

JF/lpp