Google sued by YouTube Rival Over Search Rankings

The suit also argues that Google’s agreements to pre-install a YouTube app on mobile devices running Google’s Android operating system unfairly deprived Rumble of viewers.

“Google, through its search engine, was able to unduly divert massive traffic to YouTube, depriving Rumble of additional traffic, users, uploads, brand awareness and revenue that it would have otherwise received,” says the lawsuit.

“We will defend ourselves against these unfounded claims,” ​​said a Google spokeswoman.

The Rumble suit cites the findings of a July Wall Street Journal investigation that found that Google’s search results favored YouTube links over video rivals. In a series of tests, the Journal found that the search results in the vast majority of cases featured YouTube videos before the same or very similar versions of the videos available on competing sites.

Rumble was not featured in the Journal’s tests, but the video-sharing company says in its lawsuit that it conducted its own similar tests using its videos. A view of the process includes screenshots of a Google search for “funny dogs in the noise,” which returns a list of videos entirely from YouTube.

In response to the Journal report, a Google spokeswoman said in July that no preference is given to YouTube or any other video provider on Google’s search, but declined to comment on specific examples. “Our systems use a variety of web signals to understand what results people find most relevant and useful for a particular query,” said the spokeswoman at the time.

The Rumble lawsuit comes as Google faces several other antitrust lawsuits in the United States. Two sets of US states have claimed that the company has abused its search engine and advertising business dominance. This happened after the Justice Department sued Google in October for allegedly using anti-competitive tactics to preserve its search monopoly. Google said the lawsuits lack merit.

While elements of US cases, as well as antitrust decisions in the European Union, previously claimed that Google used its weight to help its smaller companies, Monday’s case is rare because of its focus on promoting YouTube, which Google bought in 2006.

Although Rumble has recently become popular with a conservative audience – videos from vehicles such as One America News Network are among the most popular – the company’s process focuses on Google’s treatment of Rumble’s domestic viral content, such as cats and cute dogs videos.

Rumble says one of its main business models is to allow content creators to license their videos exclusively to Rumble, which distributes them to other video services, including YouTube and Microsoft Body

MSN. Rumble then pays the posters a portion of the advertising revenue that these videos generate.

Rumble says he must distribute his videos to YouTube in order to survive, because of the “monopoly that Google has gained for its YouTube platform through its illegal anti-competitive conduct”.

Since 2014, says Rumble, his syndicated videos on YouTube have generated 9.3 billion views and $ 4.3 million in revenue. Rumble says that most, if not all, of those 9.3 billion views would have occurred on the Rumble website if Google hadn’t boosted YouTube in search results. Those viewers would have watched and uploaded other videos as well, all of which would have gotten better ad rates than on YouTube, says Rumble.

Cumulatively, Rumble estimates that advertising on the visualizations supposedly missing during the period would have generated “well over $ 2 billion”.

Write to Sam Schechner at [email protected]