San Francisco: Internet giant Google has said it finds “troubling” Microsoft’s multi-billion-dollar bid to acquire rival Yahoo and urged US and international regulators to strenuously vet the proposed deal.

“Microsoft’s hostile bid for Yahoo raises troubling questions,” read a statement by 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 written statement yesterday.

He accused Microsoft of using its competitive advantage in the personal computer market to gain “inappropriate and illegal influence over the Internet” and said it was likely to try to do the same if it acquires Yahoo.

“Microsoft has frequently sought to establish proprietary monopolies — and then leverage its dominance into new, adjacent markets,” he said, adding that the Redmond, California-based company has a “legacy of serious legal and regulatory offenses” which it could not extend to the Internet.

Microsoft announced on Friday it is courting California-based Yahoo with a $44.6-billion offer.

Members of Congress’s House of Representatives Judiciary Committee have scheduled a hearing later this week to probe the antitrust implications of such a merger.

The committee’s Antitrust and Competitive Policy task force will hold the hearing to give the proposed Microsoft-Yahoo merger “careful examination,” the panel said in a statement.