Standing between a marriage of Microsoft and Yahoo may be the technology behemoth that has continually outsmarted them: Google.

In an unusually aggressive effort to prevent Microsoft from moving forward with its $44.6 billion hostile bid for Yahoo, Google emerged over the weekend with plans to play the role of spoiler.

Publicly, Google came out against the deal, contending in a statement that the pairing, proposed by Microsoft on Friday in the form of a hostile offer, would pose potential threats to competition that needed to be examined by policy makers around the world, a threat Microsoft disputed.

Privately, Google went much further. Its chief executive, Eric Schmidt, placed a call to Yahoo's chief, Jerry Yang, offering the company's help in fending off Microsoft, possibly in the form of a partnership between the companies, people briefed on the call said.

Google's lobbyists in Washington have also begun planning a case against the transaction to make with lawmakers, people briefed on the company's plans said.

In addition, several Google executives made "back-channel" calls over the weekend to allies at companies like Time Warner, which owns AOL, to inquire whether they planned to pursue a rival offer and how they could assist, these people said. Google owns 5 percent of AOL.

Despite Google's efforts and the work of Yahoo's own bankers over the weekend to garner interest in a bid to rival Microsoft's, one did not seem likely, at least at this early stage in the process.

On Monday, the Microsoft chief executive, Steve Ballmer said that the offer for Yahoo had been priced to make it easy for the company to accept and that he expected the Yahoo board and shareholders to agree quickly, The Associated Press reported.

"We think it's a generous one," Ballmer said in a presentation to investors, according to The AP. "We trust the Yahoo board and the Yahoo shareholders will join with us quickly in deciding to move down an integrated path."

Later, speaking to analysts, Ballmer said the deal would make the combined company a "strong No. 2" to Google and actually increase competition, The AP reported. At that meeting, Microsoft's chief financial officer, Chris Liddell, said the company might have to borrow money for the first time to complete the deal, according to The AP.

Frequently named prospective suitors - including Time Warner, News Corp., AT&T, and Comcast - have not begun work on a bid, people close to them said. They suggested that they did not want to enter a bidding war with Microsoft, which has much deeper pockets and could easily top their offers.

A spokesman for Time Warner declined to comment, as did a spokesman for Comcast. Representatives of News Corp. and AT&T could not be reached.

People close to Yahoo said that the company had received a flurry of inquires over the weekend from potential suitors in the media, technology and private equity industries.

Some people inside Yahoo have even speculated about the prospect of breaking up the company.

That could mean selling or forming a joint venture for its search-related business and spinning off or selling its operations that produce original content, these people said.

One person involved in Yahoo's deliberations suggested that "the sum of the parts are worth more than the whole," arguing that its various pieces like Yahoo Finance, for example, could be sold to a company like News Corp. for a huge premium while Yahoo Sports could be sold to a company like ESPN, a unit of Walt Disney.

Executives at rival companies were less optimistic about such a breakup strategy.

"No one can get to a $44 billion price," one executive at a major media company said, "even if you split it into a dozen pieces. And the price is going to be higher anyway. That was Steve's opening salvo," this person said, referring to Ballmer.

In a statement on its Web site Sunday, Google, in raising the possibility that the Microsoft purchase would threaten competition, said that given Microsoft's dominance of the PC market and its past conduct, which has been scrutinized by antitrust regulators in the United States and Europe over the years, the proposed transaction could pose threats to "innovation and openness" on the Internet.

But Google's broadly worded concerns lacked detailed claims about any anti-competitive effects of the deal, and the company did not publicly ask regulators to take specific actions.

"Could Microsoft now attempt to exert the same sort of inappropriate and illegal influence over the Internet that it did with the PC?" asked David Drummond, Google senior vice president and chief legal officer, writing on the company's blog. "While the Internet rewards competitive innovation, Microsoft has frequently sought to establish proprietary monopolies - and then leverage its dominance into new, adjacent markets."

Yahoo has declined to comment. Microsoft said, as it had Friday when it made the bid, that the merger would lead to more, not less, competition.

"The combination of Microsoft and Yahoo will create a more competitive marketplace by establishing a compelling No. 2 competitor for Internet search and online advertising," Bradford Smith, Microsoft's general counsel, said in a statement. "The alternative scenarios only lead to less competition on the Internet," he said.

Google's reaction suggests that the Internet search giant is preparing to do its best to derail or delay any merger. If so, the strategy would mirror Microsoft's own actions with respect to Google's proposed acquisition of the online advertising specialist DoubleClick for $3.1 billion, announced in April.

"Google can tap into all of the ill will that Microsoft has created in the last couple of decades on the antitrust front," said Eric Goldman, director of the High-Tech Law Institute at Santa Clara University School of Law in Santa Clara, California.

Steve Lohr contributed reporting(IHT news).

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