On Monday, other potential mates with deep pockets denied they would try to beat Microsoft Corp.’s US$44.6-billion offer even as investment bankers tried to help Yahoo remain unhitched.

But Yahoo Inc.’s board of directors can’t simply say no to such a strong offer without providing a better alternative, analysts said, and few options have emerged that wouldn’t outrage shareholders or antitrust regulators.

“Unless someone comes up with US$45 billion, I can’t see how Yahoo can walk away from that type of offer,” Standard & Poor’s analyst Scott Kessler said.

The company that Microsoft and Yahoo fear most in the Internet business — Google Inc. — is trying to squash the deal by also courting Yahoo.

On Friday, the day Microsoft made its bid public, Google Chief Executive Eric Schmidt called Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang to offer help in fending off the Redmond, Wash.-based software giant, according to a person familiar with the discussion. The companies have discussed having Google run Yahoo’s search-engine business.

Although Yahoo insiders might have more cultural affinity working with their Silicon Valley neighbors, experts said combining the Web’s two biggest search businesses could be a hard sell to regulators worried about competition.

“To go from three significant players down to two, with one having around 75 percent market share, maybe more — I can’t believe the antitrust people wouldn’t block that,” said Robert Lande, an antitrust law professor at the University of Baltimore and a longtime Microsoft watcher.

While rival bidders could still emerge, several potential suitors said they didn’t plan to compete for Yahoo against Microsoft, which can afford to pay top dollar thanks to its cash horde from computing software.

News Corp. Chairman Rupert Murdoch told analysts during an earnings call Monday that his company was “definitely not going to make a bid for Yahoo.” Cable-TV giant Comcast Corp. wants to extend its online reach, but analysts said the price probably was too rich. NBC Universal Chief Executive Jeff Zucker dismissed the rumor during a conference call with J.P. Morgan analysts and their clients, saying that NBC “was not in play,” according to two people who were on the call. NBC Universal declined to comment.

Warning that deliberations could take “quite a bit of time,” Yahoo said its directors were considering the Microsoft offer and other options, including remaining independent. Analysts said those options include recruiting a rival bid, selling the company in pieces or dragging its feet until Microsoft sweetened the offer.

“The likelihood is that (Yahoo) will not find another bidder as aggressive as Microsoft, but they have a fiduciary responsibility to check,” Stanford Group Co. analyst Clayton Moran said.

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