The lawsuit, filed in the United States District Court for the Northern District of California, seeks damages exceeding $1 billion from Google for lost advertising revenue. Rumble alleges that Google has used its dominant position in advertising technology to undercut Rumble's competitive edge. (Related: Google helping Democrats by BANNING Trump campaign ad showing how life is worse under Biden.)
Rumble claims that it could have received billions in advertising revenue if not for Google's anticompetitive conduct. Rumble claims that Google has monopolized the advertising technology industry "by buying companies up and down the chain, concurrently representing both ad buyers and sellers, while also running the exchange that connects those parties."
Rumble's full-year revenue for 2023 was only $81 million. The vast majority of this revenue came from Rumble selling ads against the user-generated content on its website.
"Google exploits significant conflicts of interest that stem from its multiple roles in this electronically traded marketplace," reads Rumble's complaint. "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."
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This builds on an accusation by Rumble that Google has been able to maintain its monopoly following a "price-fixing agreement" with Facebook's parent company Meta that prevents Facebook from offering an alternative to Google's ad tech ecosystem.
"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," further reads the complaint. "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."
Other lawsuits accuse Google of exploiting its dominance in digital advertising for profit
This is the second time Rumble has filed a lawsuit against Google. Back in 2021, Rumble accused the tech giant of favoring itself and its massively popular video hosting and sharing platform YouTube in its search results to the detriment of alternatives like Rumble. This lawsuit is currently in discovery after a judge in August 2022 decided against Google in its motion to dismiss the case.
This was followed in 2021 by a lawsuit from the Department of Justice that accused Google of abusing its dominance in the digital advertising industry, arguing that the courts should force Google to sell its ad manager suite.
Google's advertising business is responsible for about three-quarters of its revenue. It has denied Rumble's claims in its most recent lawsuit, calling them "simply wrong" and claiming that Rumble is successfully utilizing "dozens" of competing advertising services in addition to Google's ad manager.
"We'll show the court how our advertising products benefit publishers and help them fund their content online," said a Google spokesperson who insisted that publishers get to keep the vast majority of their revenue when they choose to advertise using Google's tools.
Learn more about how terrible Google is at EvilGoogle.news.
Watch this video from David Freiheit of "Viva Frei" discussing how Russia banned Rumble and yet mainstream media outlets are unwilling to report on it.
This video is from the GalacticStorm channel on Brighteon.com.
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