User Data Should Play a Crucial Role in Resolving the Google Antitrust Case

A Washington D.C. district court is poised to consider remedies for the Google antitrust case. While exclusive distribution agreements and payments will almost certainly come into play, it is also important that the judge requires Google to share with its competitors the user data that it has accumulated over the years, as well as user data it is likely to acquire.  

In August 2024, Judge Amit Mehta of the D.C. district court released his 286-page opinion in United States, et al. vs Google, LLC. He found that Google had monopolized the market for general search engines in violation of Section 2 of the Sherman Act. He found that Google did so by entering into agreements with, and making payment to, device manufacturers that made Google the exclusive default general search engine.  

The remedies hearing on the Google antitrust case is slated for April 2025. The Department of Justice and the states that sued Google have filed briefs setting forth their proposed remedies., which include the sharing of user data.  But Judge Mehta’s own opinion makes the most cogent justifications for this remedy.

Google Dominates in Data

Because it is the default general search engine on most devices, Google processes billions of search queries every day.  From these user queries, Google obtains an enormous amount of user data. According to Judge Mehta’s opinion, Google receives nine times more queries each day than all rivals combined across all devices, both computers and mobile devices. Google’s share of total queries is 89.2%. For mobile devices, Google receives 19 times more queries each day than its rivals. Google’s market share of queries on mobile devices is 94.9%.

User data from such queries is used to improve search quality. General search engines compete to attract users by providing the best answers to queries most useful to those making the query. The better the quality and efficiency of the search, the more users would be attracted to the general search engine. The more users, the more user data. The more user data, the better the quality.

The Crawl Factor

To understand the importance of user data to improve the quality of a general search engine, it is important to understand how general search engines work. General search engines are built by “crawling” the web using a crawling bot. The data collected by this bot is then indexed. A search query searches the index. General search engines must determine the order in which the bot should crawl the web. User data helps determine that order. 

General search engines must also determine the frequency to crawl certain websites. Websites that turn over their presentation and information frequently must be crawled more often. User data helps determine that frequency. To be the most efficient and accurate search engine, a general search engine must make sure that its index covers the most frequently entered queries. User data helps make that determination. Google must also determine what a user means when a query is entered imprecisely, as with spelling errors. Again, user data is key to this effort.

Judge Mehta noted that Google uses various algorithms to improve the quality of its search results. He noted that one algorithm was trained by Google on 13 months of user data. He found that 13 months of user data obtained by Google was equivalent to 17 years of data obtained by Bing, Google’s closest rival. He also found it significant that Google stores 18 months of user data at great expense.

Barrier to New Entrants

Judge Mehta noted that the amount of user data needed to improve the quality of a search engine is a barrier to new entrants and to current entrants seeking to expand market share. He found that new entrants struggle to obtain the amount of user data to compete with Google.

Judge Mehta held that Google is widely recognized as the best general search engine in the United States, particularly on mobile devices. He noted that Apple and Mozilla would on occasion, analyze the search quality of Google and its rivals. They found Google to be the superior product. He also found that Microsoft’s Bing and Duck-Duck-Go made bids to be the default general search engine but failed in part because they were deemed to have lower quality. It is unclear from the opinion who made this judgment. Because of Google’s superior quality, device manufacturers may continue to select Google as the default search engine.  

Google arguably became the superior general search engine because it was a monopolist that improperly excluded its competition and paid device makers to be the default search engine. Its monopoly position led to its obtaining vast quantities of user data. Requiring Google to share this data is an important remedy to restore competition.