# United States v. Google/Findings of Fact/Section 2D

Layout 2
​D. Search Engine Results Page
41. GSEs produce information responsive to a query on a search engine results page, or SERP. The SERP “provid[es] links to websites drawn from a broad index of the web as well as provid[es] additional information[.]” Id. at 4610:21-22 (Whinston); id. at 7026:20-22 (J. Baker).
42. Most SERPs contain some mixture of advertisements, organic links, and vertical offerings. A sample SERP is illustrated below. UPX1 at 533.
43. Organic links, or “blue links,” are unpaid search results that allow a user to navigate directly to a website. Tr. at 2221:15-19 (Giannandrea); id. at 6509:25–6510:1 (Nayak). A GSE determines which links to present by sorting through indexed webpages and presenting relevant results. See UPX8104 at 165; see also supra Section II.B; infra Sections II.G & II.H.
​44. Paid advertisements are typically generated in response to a commercial query and usually appear at the top of a SERP. See UPX1 at 533. Multiple types of advertisements can appear on a SERP, but the two primary ones are general search text ads (which resemble organic results but are labeled “sponsored” on Google) and shopping ads (which typically consist of a product photograph, vendor identity, and price information). See infra Section V.A.1.
45. A vertical offering is a category of specialized information that is accessible to users without leaving the SERP. Tr. at 2336:14-16 (Giannandrea); id. at 6509:7-21 (Nayak). Examples of verticals include information about flights, hotels, and restaurants. Such information is usually acquired from third parties and is referred to as “structured data.” Id. at 8224:18–8225:6 (Reid). Structured data can come from several sources: specialized vertical providers (like online travel sites), users, merchants, or GSE employees in the field. Id. Much of “th[is] information is not even on the web.” Id. at 8224:24-25 (Reid). Another example of structured data is a “knowledge graph,” which is a database containing useful information about people, places, and things, as well as the connections among them. See Moxley 30(b)(1) Dep. Tr. at 17:17-20; UPX1 at 533.
46. GSEs enter into data-sharing agreements with partners (usually specialized vertical providers) to obtain structured data for use in verticals. Tr. at 9148:2-5 (Holden) (“[W]e started to gather what we would call structured data, where you need to enter into relationships with partners to gather this data that’s not generally available on the web. It can’t be crawled.”). These agreements can take various forms. The GSE might offer traffic to the provider in exchange for information (i.e., data-for-traffic agreements), pay the provider revenue share, or simply compensate the provider for the information. Id. at 6181:7-18 (Barrett-Bowen).
47. As of 2020, Microsoft has partnered with more than 100 providers to obtain structured data, and those partners include information sources like Fandango, Glassdoor, IMDb, ​Pinterest, Spotify, and more. DX1305 at .004, 018–.028; accord Tr. at 6212:23–6215:10 (Barrett-Bowen) (agreeing that Microsoft partners with over 70 providers of travel and local information, including the biggest players in the space).
48. In some limited instances, providers have expressed discomfort with new or continued partnerships with Bing due to its smaller scale. Tr. at 6187:20-24 (Barrett-Bowen). For example, , an online travel company, refused to share its information with Bing given its limited distribution. Id. at 6188:5-10 (Barrett-Bowen). Bing, however, has data agreements with other travel providers, including major airlines and platforms like Booking.com, Expedia, and TripAdvisor. Id. at 6212:25–6213:11, 6214:1-2 (Barrett-Bowen); see id. at 2678:5-9 (Parakhin); DX1305 at .018–.028. On another occasion, , a provider of information, asked for a financial commitment from Bing, as the amount of traffic provided through the existing Bing- data-for-traffic agreement was insufficient. See generally Tr. at 6198–6204 (Barrett-Bowen). Bing did not agree to terms, in part due to Bing’s budgetary constraints, and that partnership ceased. Id. at 6204:13-17 (Barrett-Bowen).
49. As a third example, Bing displays information from a single partner— The “sole reason” for this is Bing’s small scale. Id. at 6190:4-12 (Barrett-Bowen). Since the industry “is just not a big category” for Bing, it makes sense for Bing to partner with a single provider to obtain as much data as possible, rather than “fragment it amongst other partnerships[.]” Id. at 6190:14-23 (Barrett-Bowen).