We would have thought that Google would be amused to watch the flailing (and distant) No. 2 and No. 3 portals scramble to join forces against them, but that's not the case at all. The New York Times reports that 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."

According to the story, this played out on two levels. Publicly, Google said that the pairing would threaten competition and need to be examined by policy makers around the world. Privately, however, Google actually reached out to Yahoo, with Google CEO Eric Schmidt personally calling Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang to attempt to work out some kind of partnership.

Check out the article—it's an interesting, if bizarre, turn of events.

Google Works to Torpedo Microsoft Bid for Yahoo [NYT]