United States v. Google/Conclusions of Law/Section 7
VII. SA360
As noted at the start of this opinion, Plaintiff States alone claim that Google engaged in additional exclusionary conduct that centers on SA360, Google’s proprietary search engine management tool, or SEM tool. See PSTB at 20–31. An SEM tool allows advertisers to run online marketing campaigns across multiple platforms in one centralized place. FOF ¶¶ 279–281. When it acquired the platform, Google vowed that SA360 would be a “neutral third party.” FOF ¶ 281. But Google has not acted in that way. Instead, Plaintiff States say, Google has prioritized and advantaged its own ad platform, Google Ads, over Microsoft’s ad platform on SA360. PSTB at 21–22. Specifically, they assert that for years Google has intentionally slow-rolled the development and launch of various features for Microsoft Ads that Google has fully integrated into SA360 for Google Ads. Id. at 22–24. Most critically, Google ignored Microsoft’s repeated pleas to integrate auction time bidding (ATB), a feature that permits advertisers to change their bid strategies in real time during auctions. Id. at 24–26; FOF ¶ 286. ATB remained unavailable for Microsoft Ads on SA360 at the time of trial. FOF ¶ 286. According to Plaintiff States, this feature disparity has caused anticompetitive effects in the proposed markets. They maintain that Google’s conduct harmed both “advertisers by diminishing the efficiency of their ad spend on SA360” and “rival GSEs that use Microsoft Ads to attract customers . . . by driving down demand for advertising on these search engines.” PSTB at 29–30.