Google sounds to be pretty elated on Microsoft’s walking away from its unsolicited $47.5 billion offer to buy rival Yahoo. Well Google has every reason to be happy.

Google’s top three executives – Eric Schmidt, the chief executive, and Larry Page and Sergey Brin, the company’s co-founders, on Thursday said that they were "obviously happy" on the collapse of Microsoft-Yahoo merger talks, which happened on Saturday when Microsoft withdrew its $47.5 billion offer to buy Yahoo.

Mr. Schmidt said that Microsoft-Yahoo could step up the competition on the Internet, but he said he was relieved that Google would not have to face that prospect, at least for now. Mr. Schmidt said, “Obviously we are happy that that is not going to happen.” When asked “Is the Microsoft-Yahoo saga over?” Schmidt said, “You never say never in this business.”

Google co-founder Sergey Brin said Google’s offer of a search advertising partnership with Yahoo was not an effort to scuttle the Microsoft-Yahoo deal, but rather an attempt to give some options to Yahoo, which faced a hostile bid from Microsoft. He said that Google was "very excited" about working with Yahoo.