[exelius]

I do this kind of work! I don’t know at Google, but typically there will be some amount of third-party due diligence for deals over a certain size / risk profile. Some companies have an internal strategic deals group; which I would assume Google likely does (but probably didn’t back then).

If both companies’ data needs to be combined an analyzed, they usually bring in an outside deals consulting firm. Those teams tend to be very small due to the sensitive nature of the discussions involved — usually 2 or 3 people (backed by a large shared support staff and tooling) over the course of a few weeks.

Often the data used is a combination of proprietary data from both companies, commercially sourced data or proprietary data platforms built by the consulting companies. Deals are a big, sensitive, relationship-driven business.