Merging Products or replace old Product without losing SEO/Link-Power

The ranking, historic data etc, is linked to the product ID. If you can ensure that the old product id is used for the new product id, then this will have little negative effects.

Assuming the product is identical.

If you can not match the product ID, then regretfully there is nothing that can be done from the perspective of Google Merchant Center.

However, there is possibility that you could use feedrules to say. If product id equals xyz2, then set it to the old id xyz1

Never tried it, as it is not recommended, but logically it could work.

More info: https://support.google.com/merchants/answer/7450276?hl=en