In a move sure to strike fear in the heart of liberals everywhere, Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation — the parent company of FOX News, mind you — might very well enter the online search arena by joining with Microsoft in their bid for Yahoo.

Here’s the New York Times with the report:

The combination, which would join Yahoo, Microsoft’s MSN and News Corporation’s MySpace, would create a behemoth that would upend the Internet landscape.

If News Corporation throws its weight behind Microsoft’s offer, that could allow Microsoft to raise its bid, putting even more pressure on Yahoo and its shareholders. At the same time, the alignment of Microsoft and News Corporation would remove a possible alternative for Yahoo, leaving it with fewer opportunities to escape Microsoft’s grasp.

Executives from [Google and Yahoo] held talks to discuss, among other things, a search advertising partnership, but those talks cooled. The advertising test may be a way for Yahoo to show Microsoft that it still has alternatives, said Carl W. Tobias, a law professor at the University of Richmond in Virginia. “But if this were to go forward as a full proposal, there would be some serious concerns in the antitrust area,” Professor Tobias said.

Ah, those “evil corporations” — what with their forcing poor consumers against their will to use the corporations’ inferior products. That’s why we have government: to save use from the greedy capitalists!

Wait, what? You mean people voluntarily visit yahoo.com instead of sites like dogpile.com, altavista.com, and ask.com? And they voluntarily use Microsoft products instead of software like Mac OS X, Ubuntu, or the OpenOffice suite?

And they do all of this because companies like Yahoo and Microsoft actually offer the highest quality products?

My point is: of course people will scream “Monopoly!” all day long if Yahoo teams up with another large, successful company; but I don’t even think a search engine monopoly is a real-world possibility, because it’s soooooo incredibly simple to just visit a different search engine.

So don’t worry about “antitrust” issues. If the sector of internet search engines turns into a bloated oligopoly — well, more so than it is now — some unknown competitor will surface and force the 800 lb. gorillas back into competitive mode.

Just like Google did in the late 90’s.