Internet giant Google has appointed its first-ever UK head of legal, with the European general counsel of holiday company Expedia, Luisa Edwards, named in the high-profile role.

Edwards takes up her new post on 3 December and will report in to Google's European legal chief, Nigel Jones. She will be based in Google's UK offices in central London and will be tasked with building the online giant's domestic legal team.

While at Expedia, Edwards grew the holiday search company's legal team from just one lawyer to five. She instructed law firms including Allen & Overy, Richards Butler Reed Smith and niche IT/IP practice Kemp Little.

Edwards is the second high-profile lawyer to leave Expedia in as many years, after corporate travel lawyer Flavia Richardson quit the internet travel company to join rival group Opodo in 2006.

Google currently has 45 lawyers across Europe, although that number is set to rise as the company hunts for legal heads for its operations in Amsterdam, Milan, Madrid, Moscow and Zurich.

In 2006 Google hired former Baker & McKenzie associate Peter Fleischer from Microsoft as its first-ever privacy counsel. Fleischer announced earlier this year that Google was to overhaul its data retention practices by storing personal user information for a maximum of 18 months.

Google is the world's most popular search engine, conducting over half of all web-searches made globally and boasting annual revenues of more than $10bn (£4.8bn).

The company has undergone rapid growth in headcount over the past three years, increasing its number of staff four-fold to its current tally of over 15,000.

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