United States v. Google/Findings of Fact/Section 2A
II. GENERAL SEARCH ENGINES
- A. Overview
21. Google, Bing, Yahoo, DDG, Ecosia, and Brave are GSEs. See, e.g., id. at 2168:1-4 (Giannandrea); id. at 1031:2-10 (Higgins); id. at 1942:11-17 (Weinberg); id. at 8201:23-24 (Reid). There is “relatively limited [user] overlap between the general search engines.” Id. at 8728:23-24 (Israel).
22. Bing is Google’s largest general search competitor today. Id. at 8094:8-10 (Raghavan). It is the only rival that crawls the web and generates its own search results. The next two largest search engines, Yahoo and DDG, syndicate their search results from Bing. See id. at 3520:13-25 (Nadella).
23. By 2009, 80% of all general search queries, whether entered on a desktop computer or mobile device, flowed through Google. Id. at 4762:4-12 (Whinston) (discussing UPXD102 at 48); e.g., UPX472; see also Tr. at 203:21–204:5 (Varian) (Google began measuring its search share against other GSEs monthly in 2009). That percentage had increased from 80% to 89.2% by 2020. Tr. at 4761:14–4762:8 (Whinston) (discussing UPXD102 at 47).
24. Google’s share of search queries on mobile devices was even higher at 94.9% in 2020. Id. at 4762:19–4763:2 (Whinston) (discussing UPXD102 at 49); see also UPX476 at 668 (Google’s internal share calculation of 98% of mobile GSE queries in 2019). The percentage on desktop devices was 84%. See UPX476 at 668.
25. Google’s second-place rival, Bing, receives roughly 6% of all search queries. Tr. at 4761:12-14 (Whinston) (discussing UPXD102 at 47). Bing (5.5%), Yahoo (2.2%), DDG (2.1%), and other rivals (0.9%) together see less than 11% of all queries. Id. Their numbers are even lower on mobile devices. Id. at 4762:19–4763:2 (Whinston) (discussing UPXD102 at 49) (Bing (1.3%), Yahoo (2.1%), DDG (1.5%), and others (0.2%)). Bing’s market share has never risen above 12%. See id. at 4762:4-12 (Whinston) (discussing UPXD102 at 48).
26. Bing sees more desktop queries than mobile queries because it has greater distribution on Windows desktop devices, where it is the default GSE on the preloaded Edge browser. See id. at 3096:14-18 (Tinter).