With all of the news around Microsoft's abandoned Yahoo bid and its reported courtship of Facebook this week, it's understandable that one rumor managed to slip through the cracks:

Microsoft is coming to Brooklyn!

Well, Microsoft is talking about coming to Brooklyn, according to the company that's looking for an occupant for a 33,000-square foot space in the renovated Williamsburgh Savings Bank building.

"We've talked to Apple about opening their first Brooklyn store, and we've also talked to Microsoft about opening the first retail store," Faith Hope Consolo, chairwoman of Prudential Douglas Elliman's retail leasing and sales division, told the Brooklyn Paper.

Last year, The Onion "reported on" an alternate reality of sorts where customers camped out for the second Zune release at a midtown New York Microsoft store.

But then rumors of a real Microsoft retail presence began heating up last month, and the blog Gizmodo reported that Microsoft will staff its stores with experts to help customers with questions and problems, much like the Apple Genius Bar.

The blog went so far as to mock up an illustration with Ned Flanders outside a Microsoft store with a sign reading "Vista Rocks."

Even if Microsoft does end up with an Apple-like store presence eventually, it's hard to imagine Brooklyn hipsters following Flanders to the Zune store. And it's even more difficult to imagine how the software company could fill up 33,000 square feet with Xboxes, Zunes, and Windows software.

by Megan Barnett