executive put it, once that 10% of ad spend on Bing is exhausted, “there’s [nowhere] else to go.” Tr. at 4875:19–4876:4 (Lim).
Barriers to entry are high. Because only GSEs can display text ads, new entrants face the same major obstacles as would the developer of a new GSE. Supra Section II.C.3. Those barriers are compounded by the additional costs and resources required to build an ad platform to deliver text ads. FOF ¶ 55 (Google spends $11.1 billion annually on search ads and $8.4 billion on search). Significant entry barriers thus insulate from erosion Google’s longstanding, dominant market share in the text ads market. Google has monopoly power in this market.
Direct Evidence. It is not necessary here to discuss the specific evidence Plaintiffs have offered to prove that Google priced text ads at supracompetitive levels (or Google’s responses to that evidence). It is sufficient at this point to observe what is undisputed, which is that Google does not consider competitors’ pricing when it sets text ads prices. FOF ¶ 267. That is “something a firm without a monopoly would have been unable to do.” Microsoft, 253 F.3d at 57–58 (making that observation as to Microsoft’s pricing of Windows); see also Am. Tobacco Co., 328 U.S. at 811 (“[T]he material consideration in determining whether a monopoly exists is not that prices are raised and that competition is actually excluded but that power exists to raise prices or exclude competition when it is desired to do so.”) (emphasis added).
Google responds that Microsoft’s observation does not apply here, because Google does not set ad prices, the auctions do. GTB at 31 n.1; GFOF ¶ 1144. But that contention overlooks that Google controls key inputs to the auctions that influence the ultimate price that advertisers pay. FOF ¶¶ 243–246. That Google makes changes to its text ads auctions without considering its rivals’ prices is something that only a firm with monopoly power is able to do. And, as will be
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