Video sharing platform Rumble has said that it has sued Google, arguing the tech giant has engaged in anticompetitive practices across its digital advertising products and sought damages in excess of $1 billion. The suit alleges Google has monopolised the ad stack “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 has accused Google of maintaining its monopoly by reaching an agreement with Meta’s Facebook to prevent Facebook from offering alternatives to Google’s ad tech ecosystem.
Google denied Rumble’s claims calling them “simply wrong” and said that Rumble utilises “dozens” of competing ad 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,” a Google spokesperson said in a statement, insisting that publishers keep a vast majority of the revenue when they choose Google tools.
Rumble filed the suit recently in the USA District Court for the Northern District of California. This is the second time Rumble has filed a lawsuit against Google. The earlier suit filed in 2021 accused the company of favouring itself and its video-sharing platform, YouTube, in its search results.
The USA Justice Department also filed an advertising lawsuit against Google last year accusing the company of abusing its dominance of the digital advertising business and argued that it should be forced to sell its ad manager suite.
