Google's chief executive, Eric Schmidt, has sent a message loud and clear to Yahoo!-- "Let's circle the  wagons and hold off Microsoft together."

Google, of course, has the financial clout to go toe-to-toe with Microsoft. The problem is, Google can't counter Microsoft's offer to buy Yahoo!. That would be a marriage that would never pass anti-trust law muster.

As a side note, because off Google's dominance of the search engine markets, a Microsoft purchase of Yahoo! probably would sail by any anti-trust concerns. Even a combined Microsoft-Yahoo! would still substantially trail Google in search engine market share.

So how can Google possibly step in and help Yahoo!

One solution, that might actually work, can be found in this New York Times article.

Basically, Google could buy the right to sell ads on Yahoo!'s search results. This could give Yahoo! a long term guarantee of advertising revenue on its search results pages and theorically goose the stock price, thereby somewhat appeasing Yahoo! shareholders.

It could also buy Yahoo! more time to figure out it's place in the Internet universe and reshape itself into a much stronger player, one that could maintain its indepdendence as a corporate entity.

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