“In an attempt to resolve some of the problems the states’ chief law enforcement officers have raised, I am calling a time out, so that cooler heads may prevail,” he said. Mr. Hood added that he would contact Google’s board to “negotiate a peaceful resolution to the issues affecting consumers that we attorneys general have pointed out in a series of eight letters to Google.”

Mr. Hood issued a 79-page subpoena in October, asking that the company turn over information about its search engine and sales of illegal drugs, pornography and other materials. He suggested that the company was knowingly profiting from such sales and demanded a response from Google by early January.

For several years, Google has been involved in legal wrangling with Mr. Hood and other attorneys general as the states tried to use their consumer protection authorities to push the company to crack down on such transactions. The states argued that Google benefited because of the sellers advertised on the search engine.

Emails and other records obtained by The New York Times — and which were stolen from Sony by hackers — showed how the movie industry, through a nonprofit group it funded, had hired the former attorney general from Mississippi, whom Mr. Hood used to work for, to put pressure on Mr. Hood to go after the company.