The Canadian-based video-sharing website, Rumble, has filed an antitrust lawsuit against Google. The lawsuit alleges that Google is using monopoly powers that violate Sections 1 and 2 of the Sherman Antitrust Act. Specifically, they claim that Google is using its Search Engine and the Google-owned operating system Android, to divert traffic to Google owned-Youtube and away from Youtube’s competitors.
The suit was filed in Federal Court in San Jose, California. Rumble alleges that Google’s actions have cost the company between $2 and $6 Billion in lost revenue. They are seeking treble damages, an injunction against Google, as well as re-reimbursement of attorney fees. This comes on the heels of an anti-trust lawsuit filed against Amazon by Parler.
Rumble was founded in 2013 by a group of North Macedonian immigrants. The CEO, Chris Pavlovski, also runs Cosmic Developments in North Macedonia. Rumble’s daily operation is partially run out of Toronto, Canada, and partially outsourced to Cosmic Developments. Rumble is trying to directly compete with Youtube by offering video hosting services that can be monetized.
Many people, on all sides of the political spectrum, would like the US Government to break up monster tech companies like Google, Amazon, and Facebook the same way AT&T’s monster telephone network was broken up in 1984.
The allegations Rumble has levied against Google are not unlike the allegations made against AT&T. In the 1970s, lawsuits were launched against AT&T accusing it of using its power company profits to subsidize its phone network. Thus creating artificially low telephone fees that no one else could compete with. In other words, using one asset to artificially prop up another asset to prevent any competition from emerging.
Today, Alexa and Similarweb both rank Google as the most visited website in the entire world and Google-owned Youtube as the second most visited.
In recent weeks, Rumble has surged in popularity over a growing backlash against politically motivated censorship on Facebook, Twitter, and Youtube.
Alexa now ranks Rumble as the 1,691st most popular website in the world (rolling 90-day average) and the 379th most popular in the USA (rolling 30-day average). These scores have been steadily dropping each day other the past week.
