United States v. Google/Findings of Fact/Section 4B
- B. Social Media Platforms
159. Users go to social media platforms primarily to interact with others and view photos and videos. Id. at 5392:19-24 (Jerath); cf. id. at 6943:19-21 (Amaldoss) (“I can say people go to social media for entertainment and Twitter for entertainment. They’re not going there to collect information.”). People tend to engage with social media properties for longer sessions than with GSEs. See id. at 1408:3-20 (Dischler).
160. Examples of social media platforms are Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Snapchat, LinkedIn, Pinterest, and TikTok. Id. at 3928:2-14 (Lowcock); id. at 4840:23-25 (Lim).
161. Industry participants do not consider social media sites to be GSEs. See, e.g., id. at 5243:6-8 (Dijk) (TikTok); id. at 183:13-18 (Varian) (Facebook).
162. On TikTok, users do not have to enter a query to view content. Id. at 7419:16-18 (Raghavan). Instead, they “scroll through a video feed that’s based on an algorithm of their engagement with past videos[.]” Id. at 7419:23–7420:1 (Raghavan). TikTok does have a search functionality, but if users enter a query on TikTok, the results page only displays content already on TikTok and does not contain links or information from the open web. Id. at 7420:22–7421:7, 7421:22-25 (Raghavan). As compared to Google, the user experience on TikTok is “quite different, that’s clear.” Id. at 7424:17-18 (Raghavan).
163. Google’s internal studies suggest that younger users may be increasingly using social media for search-related needs. Id. at 8202:24–8203:5 (Reid); DX241 at .010 (“63% of daily TikTok users aged 18 to 24 stated that they use TikTok as a search engine in the last week.”). The majority of Google users are not in that narrow age range. Tr. at 8261:15–8362:20 (Reid).
164. Still, Google views social media sites like Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok as competitive threats. See id. at 7386:23–7387:13 (Raghavan); see also id. at 1412:23-25 (Dischler) (Instagram’s ad revenue growth is “seen as a competitive threat” by Google); UPX8085 at 854 (“We face formidable competition in every aspect of our business, including, among others, from . . . social networks, which users may rely on for product or service referrals, rather than seeking information through traditional search engines[.]”). For example, Google’s Senior Vice President of Knowledge and Information Products, Dr. Prabhakar Raghavan, explained that TikTok is growing more rapidly than Google, in part due to “an extremely compelling product, especially for a younger demographic.” Tr. at 7393:2-15 (Raghavan); see also id. at 7401:9-11 (Raghavan) (describing “TikTok’s rise” as “mercurial,” and stating that he “expect[s] it to grow again at the expense of some of the others”).
165. The evidence does not show, however, that increased use of social media corresponds to a decrease in use of Google. In fact, a 2009 Google study showed that users who increase their use of Facebook tend to use Google more often, not less. UPX902 at 020.