I stopped reading when I got to the part where the author expressed an apathetic ignorance about the concept of "goodwill". If the author can't be arsed to research an article, I can't be bothered to read it.

That said, the article did motivate me to do 10 minutes of research into United States GAAP and conclude that the $33 billion is probably a result of the Compaq merger.

Edit:

The Inquirer says HP valued the goodwill from the Compaq acquisition at $14.5 billion: http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/1019181/when-hp-bou...

That leaves another $18.5 billion that is probably explained by this list: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_acquisitions_by_Hewlett...