Rumble the video sharing platform sues Google, arguing the tech giant has engaged in anticompetitive practices across its digital advertising products. Rumble has also sought damages in excess of $1 billion from Google as per the lawsuit, on Monday.
The lawsuit alleges Google has taken a monopoly on 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 sues Google
Rumble’s antitrust lawsuit accuses 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.
The lawsuit argues that Google owes Rumble upwards of $1 billion in damages for lost ad revenue as a client, and for illegally leveraging its dominance in ad technology to hamper Rumble’s ability to compete as an ad tech competitor.
Google on Rumble lawsuit
Google denied Rumble’s claims calling them “simply wrong” and said that Rumble utilizes “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 to Reuters, insisting that publishers keep a vast majority of the revenue when they choose Google tools.
Rumble filed the suit late on Monday in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California.
Second lawsuit by Rumble
This is the second time Rumble has filed a lawsuit against Google. The earlier suit filed in 2021 accused the company of favoring itself and its video-sharing platform, YouTube, in its search results.
Rumble feels uniquely positioned to take the lead in its legal battles with Google because it believes it’s been harmed by Google’s monopoly abuse both as a customer of its ad tech solutions and as a competitor.
However, the firm which is headquartered in Canada but trades publicly in the U.S. has not been called to testify against Google in the U.S. government’s current lawsuit against the tech giant. The trial for Rumble’s search ad lawsuit is scheduled for next April in Oakland, California.
Google’s advertising business is responsible for about three-quarters of its revenue.
Rumble’s revenue
Rumble’s ad marketplace revenues are still small, but the company sees its ad tech and cloud product offerings as a growing part of its business.
Rumble’s full-year revenue for 2023 was $81 million. The vast majority of that revenue came from Rumble selling ads against the user-generated content on its platform.
Other lawsuits against Google
Rumble’s new lawsuit is the latest litigation waged against Google for ad tech dominance.
The U.S. 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. The EU fined Google $1.7 billion for illegally stifling online ad competition in 2019. Dozens of other publishers in the U.S. and globally have also sued Google for the same reason.
