Feb 17, 2011 06:30 GMT  ·  By

Google is under a lot of scrutiny from a variety of government bodies, in the US and abroad. In early fall last year, it was revealed that the Texas Attorney General is investigating the Mountain View giant over anti-trust issues, but the meat of the problem was not known, until now. The full extent of the AG's request has been revealed and it's pretty wide-reaching.

The AG wants to know everything from how prices for ads are determined to whether Google's shopping search products are somehow given preferential treatment.

In total, the AG's office is making some 39 different requests for documents and data and the investigation is looking like one of the most thorough of Google's business to date.

Much of the focus is on Google's AdSesnse business, the AG wants to know how Google determines the price of ads through its automated bidding service, possibly to determine that it doesn't do itself any favors with it.

It's also looking to see whether shopping websites like Froogle, Google Product Search and Google Shopping are anti-competititve, one of the issues over which Google is being investigated in Europe at the moment.

Of course, the organic searches are under scrutiny as well, the AG wants to see if it can find evidence of manual altering of the search results ranking, something Google claims it never does, again, to determine whether this, were it to take place, is anti-competitive.

The attorney general's office also requested similar documents from the other main players in the search space, Yahoo and Microsoft.

It's unclear if Google has complied with the request for documents and what, if anything, it has shared. There are no preliminary results or conclusions from the AG office. For its part, Google says it is collaborating with the AG but it believes it is in the clear.

"Since we started Google we have worked hard to do the right thing by our users and our industry, and while there’s always going to be room for improvement, we’re committed to competing fair and square," Google said in a statement.

"We’re continuing to work with the Texas attorney general’s office to answer their questions and understand any concerns," it added.