Rumble, a video platform focused on helping over two million creators manage, distribute, and monetize their video content, filed a lawsuit today against the multinational technology company Google LLC, “for monetary damages well in excess of $2,000,000,000 that Rumble has sustained and continues to sustain as a proximate result of Google’s antitrust violations.” Because Rumble shares revenue with its content creators, this has harmed them as well.
The complaint charges, “by unfairly rigging its search algorithms such that YouTube is the first-listed links ‘above the fold’ on its search results page, Google, through its search engine, was able to wrongfully divert massive traffic to YouTube, depriving Rumble of the additional traffic, users, uploads, brand awareness and revenue it would have otherwise received.”
Using data from Google and YouTube analytics regarding views of Rumble’s original content videos on YouTube, the complaint also alleges that “Rumble lost a huge amount of revenue on the 9.3 billion views that Google wrongfully directed to YouTube with its unfair YouTube-preferencing algorithms. If even a portion of those 9.3 billion views had occurred on Rumble’s website instead of YouTube, that would have generated well in excess of 100 million additional video uploads to the Rumble platform, which in turn would have generated billions of more views on the Rumble platform, and massive amounts of additional revenue for Rumble and its content creators.”
Because Rumble has exclusive rights to original content videos, it has been able to determine that Google wrongfully self-preferences YouTube over Rumble. For example, even if the Google search term specifically asks for “dog videos on rumble,” Google lists unrelated YouTube videos ahead of Rumble.com’s listings. And, even if the search term asks for an exclusive Rumble video by its exact title, for example, “Baby preciously cuddles cat for nap time,” the Google search page still self-preferences YouTube, even though Google has publicly stated that it gives preference to and “elevates” original reporting in its search results.
Rumble is one of the most respected independent and privately owned companies in the online videosharing platform industry and its business model is premised upon helping small and independent video creators.
“As stated in the complaints filed by the Department of Justice and many state Attorneys General against Google, Google uses its search engine monopoly to wrongfully achieve and maintain monopolies for its many companies, and in this case, we have indisputable proof that it does so for its YouTube platform, harming competition, competitors and consumers. Google’s monopoly power is being used to unjustly and wrongfully deprive Rumble of the views, users, uploads, and consumer awareness, and the revenue for it and its content creators, that would be theirs in an un-rigged marketplace,” stated Chris Pavlovski, CEO of Rumble.
