According to a Forbes. com report, citing the information shared by Dow Jones reporter Kenneth Maxwell, Google is apparently interested in breaking the Yahoo-Microsoft search deal, so that Yahoo can switch over from Microsoft's Bing to Google as its official search partner.

As per Maxwell, Google's executive chairman Eric Schmidt said during a recent launch event for the Google Nexus 7 tablet in Japan that Google was interested in having Bing replaced by Google as Yahoo's search engine.

Maxwell, who was in attendance at the Tokyo event, covering the proceedings for Dow Jones, said in a conformation to Forbes that "Eric Schmidt definitely said they (Google) would be interested in working with Yahoo U. S."

Going by Maxwell's account of Schmidt's remarks at the event, when it was mentioned to Schmidt that the new Yahoo US management - chiefly hinting at the new Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer - has "a Google connection," Schmidt apparently "played it pretty straight" by saying that Google had already expressed its interest to Yahoo, about a search deal, on "a number of occasions."

Schmidt's public statements about Google interested in becoming Yahoo's official search partner come years after search-ad partnership talks between the two companies fell through in 2008 over fears that the government may likely file an antitrust suit against them --- a situation which benefited Microsoft which eventually ended up with a search deal with Yahoo!