YouTube Rival Rumble Sues Google Over Alleged Search Ranking Bias: WSJ

Video-sharing site Rumble Inc. has filed a lawsuit against Alphabet Inc’s GOOG (GOOGL) Google, accusing it of abusing its search engine power to stifle rivals, the Wall Street Journal reports.

What Happened: Toronto-based Rumble, which has shot up in popularity among conservatives recently, alleged Google of anticompetitive conduct, arguing that it is “unfairly rigging its search algorithms” to place YouTube over Rumble in its search results, as per WSJ. 

The lawsuit also states that Google’s deal to pre-install YouTube on Android devices has unfairly deprived Rumble of viewers. “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 the revenue it would have otherwise received,” the company claims.

As per Rumble’s calculation, the missed advertising and views could have generated more than $2 billion in revenue since 2014.

A Google spokeswoman told WSJ that it would defend against Rumble’s “baseless claims.”

Why It Matters: Google is already facing different lawsuits for antitrust conduct. Apart from the Department of Justice lawsuit filed in October, a bipartisan coalition of states has also sued the search engine giant over antitrust practices related to its online search dominance.

Rumble has emerged as a conservative alternative to YouTube and has seen rising popularity as right-leaning voices accuse big-tech like Facebook, Inc FB and Twitter Inc TWTR suppress conservative views.

Last week, Amazon.com, Inc AMZN blocked the right-leaning social media platform Parler from its cloud-hosting service Amazon Web Services over not being able to “effectively identify and remove content that encourages or incites violence.”

Price Action: GOOG shares closed 2.24% lower at $1,766.72 on Monday.

Related News: Parler Sues Amazon Over Allegations Of Political Bias, Favoring Twitter