According to an inside scoop from Reuters, the Texas attorney general’s office has hired three consultants for a multi-state probe it is leading into Google, including an economist who worked with some of the firm’s major rivals and a lawyer who is a Microsoft veteran.
A group of 48 state attorneys general, joined by Washington, DC, and Puerto Rico, announced this month that they were investigating accusations of antitrust violations by search and advertising giant Google, one of several focused on tech firms.
The three consultants are Roger Alford, until this year an assistant attorney general in the Justice Department’s Antitrust Division; Eugene Burrus, an external adviser at McKinsey & Co who was assistant general counsel at Microsoft Corp; and Cristina Caffarra, an economist heading the European competition team at consultancy Charles River Associates.
“Everyone knows this will be a long-running investigation,” said Alford, who has taught law at the University of Notre Dame since 2012. He told Reuters that meetings on the matter began in August, but declined to comment further.
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