Google has said it finds Microsoft's $44.6bn (£22.65bn) bid to buy rival Yahoo "troubling" and wants regulators to scrutinise the proposed deal. In a blog, Google said the tie-up could unfairly limit the ability of consumers to freely access competitors' email and instant messaging services.
It said Microsoft had previously sought "to establish proprietary monopolies".
Microsoft made an unsolicited offer for Yahoo on Friday, and Yahoo has said it is considering the proposal. "Microsoft's hostile bid for Yahoo raises troubling questions," said David Drummond, Google's senior vice president for corporate development and chief legal officer.
"This is about more than simply a financial transaction, one company taking over another. It's about preserving the underlying principles of the internet: openness and innovation," he said in a company blog. Google's efforts aside, analysts say a bidding war for Yahoo looks unlikely given Microsoft's deep pockets.
It said Microsoft had previously sought "to establish proprietary monopolies".
Microsoft made an unsolicited offer for Yahoo on Friday, and Yahoo has said it is considering the proposal. "Microsoft's hostile bid for Yahoo raises troubling questions," said David Drummond, Google's senior vice president for corporate development and chief legal officer.
"This is about more than simply a financial transaction, one company taking over another. It's about preserving the underlying principles of the internet: openness and innovation," he said in a company blog. Google's efforts aside, analysts say a bidding war for Yahoo looks unlikely given Microsoft's deep pockets.
Yahoo! Inc. rose the most since its first day of trading when Microsoft offered $44.6 billion for the company, the second- most popular search engine, on Feb. 1. Yang, who returned as Yahoo's chief executive officer to try to reverse a two-year stock slump, had presided over a 32 percent drop before the bid.
Microsoft said Yahoo executives snubbed its overtures last year in favor of tackling Internet search leader Google Inc. independently. Yahoo's stock performance shows investors don't embrace that strategy and that Yang's promises to revamp the company's search engine and gain on Google were in vain.
Microsoft's proposed bid, unveiled in a letter to Yahoo's board on Friday, is 62% above Yahoo's closing share price on Thursday.
Microsoft said Yahoo executives snubbed its overtures last year in favor of tackling Internet search leader Google Inc. independently. Yahoo's stock performance shows investors don't embrace that strategy and that Yang's promises to revamp the company's search engine and gain on Google were in vain.
Microsoft's proposed bid, unveiled in a letter to Yahoo's board on Friday, is 62% above Yahoo's closing share price on Thursday.
Microsoft's $31-a-share bid came three days after Sunnyvale, California-based Yahoo posted an eighth straight quarter of declining profit and projected sales that trailed most analysts' estimates. Yang and co-founder David Filo, both graduate students started the company in 1995 with $2 million from venture capital firm Sequoia Capital in Menlo Park, California. Yahoo's sales increased from $20 million in 1996 to more than $1 billion four years later. As traffic on the Web soared, so did advertising revenue, helping Yahoo's stock market value jump to more than $100 billion, most of which was lost in the technology-stock crash of 2000.
Yahoo was trading at $19.18 before the offer. The stock rose $9.20 to $28.38 in Nasdaq Stock Market trading after the Microsoft announcement, and extended the gain to the equivalent of $28.73 at 9:28 a.m. in German trading today.
Microsoft rose 1.1 percent to the equivalent of $30.77 at 9:25 a.m. in German trading from the close of $30.45 in the U.S. on Feb. 1. Google added 0.4 percent to $518 in Germany from last week's U.S. close of $515.90.
Google Chief Executive Officer Eric Schmidt called Yahoo's Yang and offered a potential partnership between the two companies to thwart Microsoft's $44.6 billion bid, the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal reported today, both citing people familiar with the matter.
Yahoo was trading at $19.18 before the offer. The stock rose $9.20 to $28.38 in Nasdaq Stock Market trading after the Microsoft announcement, and extended the gain to the equivalent of $28.73 at 9:28 a.m. in German trading today.
Microsoft rose 1.1 percent to the equivalent of $30.77 at 9:25 a.m. in German trading from the close of $30.45 in the U.S. on Feb. 1. Google added 0.4 percent to $518 in Germany from last week's U.S. close of $515.90.
Google Chief Executive Officer Eric Schmidt called Yahoo's Yang and offered a potential partnership between the two companies to thwart Microsoft's $44.6 billion bid, the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal reported today, both citing people familiar with the matter.
The offer from Microsoft is one of many options Yahoo is evaluating, Yang and Chairman Roy Bostock said in a Feb. 1 e-mail to employees obtained by Bloomberg News. The board will respond after reviewing the alternatives, they said. If Yahoo accepts the deal, Yang stands to get about $1.6 billion in cash or Microsoft stock for his 52.8 million shares.
Microsoft may have to raise its price to win over Yahoo's board, said Jason Helfstein, an Oppenheimer & Co. analyst in New York. Helfstein suggested in a Feb. 1 report that an increase to as much as $40 a share, or about $53.5 billion, was possible. Microsoft spokesman Bill Cox declined to comment.
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