Google News Hits Rivals’ Stocks

Shares of Yahoo Inc. and other Web-search companies fell Friday on concern that stockholders will shift money into Google Inc., the most-used search site.

Google, based in Mountain View, Calif., filed regulatory forms Thursday to raise as much as $2.7 billion in an initial public offering of stock. When the shares are publicly traded, investors may favor Google over competitors.

Shares of Sunnyvale, Calif.-based Yahoo fell $4.18 to $50.53. InfoSpace Inc., the Bellevue Wash.-based owner of search sites such as WebCrawler.com, saw its shares drop $2.71 to $32.91. Emeryville, Calif.-based search engine Ask Jeeves Inc. fell $3.38 to $35.37. All trade on Nasdaq.

“Some investors will be taking money out of some of these stocks and putting money to work in Google,” said Paul Cook, a fund manager at Munder Capital Management, which held 2.46 million Yahoo shares in December.