GOOGLE CEO Eric Schmidt warned that Microsoft's acquisition of Yahoo could give it the power to “break the internet” and severely impede the free flow of information.

Hinting at then Vole's history of riding roughshod over the rule-book and annhilating competition, Schmidt told Portfolio that the Vole’s murky past did not bode well for the future of openness and interoperability on the Web.

"All internet-based systems today are highly interoperable, open systems. The whole antitrust trial that Microsoft went through was really about it breaking that" he said, adding, "We would be concerned by any kind of acquisition of Yahoo by Microsoft".

He added, "We would hope that anything they did would be consistent with the openness of the Internet, but I doubt it would be."

Of course, all this talk of openness is a bit like the pot calling the kettle black. Google tends to play its cards very close to its chest, which have sparked numerous calls for the search engine giant to become more transparent.

Reuters asked a bunch of financial analysts, if Microsoft would eventually succeed in buying Yahoo. They all said yes. µ