Search giant Google is facing a $1 billion lawsuit from Rumble for illegally leveraging its technological advantage manipulate and prevent the popular video-sharing platform from competing s an ad tech competitor.
The lawsuit alleges that Google has abused its position to deprive Rumble of billions in ad revenue.
The complaint reads:
“Google exploits significant conflicts of interest that stem from its multiple roles in this electronically traded marketplace. As a result, it is able to pocket a supra-competitive portion of every advertising dollar that passes through the Ad Tech markets it controls, ad revenue that rightly should have passed through to publishers like Rumble and its content creators.
Google unlawfully forecloses competition in the market for publisher ad servers in the market for ad buying tools for small advertisers, and in the separate markets for ad exchanges and ad networks,” the complaint reads.
Google excludes competition by engaging in conduct unlawful under settled antitrust precedent, including through unlawful tying arrangements, a pattern and practice of exclusionary conduct targeting actual and potential rivals, and even a market allocation and price fixing agreement with Facebook, at one time its largest potential competitive threat in the publisher ad server and ad network markets.“
Google has become notorious for its aggressive and bullying behavior towards potential competitors.
In 2021, Rumble filed a separate antitrust lawsuit alleging that it favored YouTube in search results and across the Android operating system.
In 2022, a California judge ruled that the lawsuit could proceed, with the two sides currently in discovery.
Last year, the Justice Department and several U.S. states sued Google for violations of the Sherman Antitrust Act.
In Europe, the search giant was fined $1.7 billion in 2019 for engaging in anticompetitive practices.
Just recently, Google censored an advertisement by President Donald Trump’s campaign because it claims it “violated” its policies.
NBC News’ Andrew Arenge initially flagged the removal of the ads, sharing screenshots of them being removed from Google’s search results.
NEW: This ad has been removed by Google for a "policy violation". It was live in the Google archive this morning but I just looked and it's now been removed.
— Andrew Arenge (@MrArenge) May 3, 2024
Super PAC spent over $15K targeting it at specific communities near Macon, GA after launching it on April 25th. https://t.co/DQnUHgsUuS pic.twitter.com/AnwHwtzlp0
READ: Google Influencing Elections by Flipping Votes on ‘Massive Scale’