  Stability, electroweak symmetry breaking, and the stationarity equations of
the general three-Higgs-doublet model (3HDM) where all doublets carry the same
hypercharge are discussed in detail. Employing the bilinear formalism the study
of the 3HDM potential turns out to be straightforward. For the case that the
potential leads to the physically relevant electroweak symmetry breaking we
present explicit formulae for the masses of the physical Higgs bosons.
