In a petition filed in a Texas state court on Monday, Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott has leveled the accusation against Google that it had stymied an investigation into its contentious business practices by improperly withholding evidence.

With Google having refused to hand over more than 14,500 documents sought in the Texas' two-year-old investigation into whether the Internet search giant has been abusing its dominance of Internet search, Abbott is seeking a court order which would obligate that the company surrenders the requested material.

Texas is one of the six US states which are presently assessing whether Google's business practices thwart competition in the Internet search space by manipulating the results with the help of its influential recommendations; and whether such a practice drives up online advertising prices. Similar investigations into Google's allegedly antitrust practices are also being carried out by the Federal Trade Commission and European regulators.

Since the Texas dispute largely pivots around whether the documents withheld by Google are legally protected communications between the lawyers and employees of the company, Abbott has asserted that Google is apparently trying to conceal documents which are not covered under the shield called attorney-client privilege.

Meanwhile, projecting itself as a good corporate citizen, Google said in a Thursday statement: "We have shared hundreds of thousands of documents with the Texas Attorney General, and we are happy to answer any questions that regulators have about our business."