Is this the result of HP merging with Compaq?

No. HP Pavilions are still designed and made by the same people that made them pre merger. Compaq Presario on the other hand did see a nice change right before the merger. The old Presario team was let go in a round of layoffs, and the Deskpro team started working on all the consumer desktops. The change is easy to spot, the towers stopped shipping with color choices, and instead started looking like normal computers again.

As far as I know, the Compaq name will exist for desktops for a long time to come, to allow HP to have more shelf space at Best Buy and such.