A lawsuit filed against Google by Rumble, a pro-free speech video platform that has accused the Big Tech giant of actively suppressing its competitors, has been allowed to proceed in court, over Google’s objections.
As reported by Just The News, Google – which owns YouTube, the largest video-sharing platform in the world – tried to have Rumble’s antitrust lawsuit dismissed altogether. On Friday, U.S. District Judge Haywood Gilliam rejected the motion, writing that “without real dispute,” Rumble had indeed sufficiently made the case that Google was in violation of Section 2 of the Sherman Act. This, Gilliam said, brings into question Google’s “somewhat counterintuitive premise that [Rumble] has pled too much.”
The lawsuit is just the third suit filed against a Big Tech company in three months that has won legal approval. In July, a federal judge ordered that three major social media companies – Meta (formerly known as Facebook), Twitter, and YouTube – must turn over any documents relevant to actions taken by the companies to suppress their alternative competitors. The suit in question alleges that these companies actively conspired with each other to simultaneously and systematically stifle such rivals, including reducing their visibility in search results and taking away their ability to monetize with Google AdSense.
In another prior lawsuit, former New York Times journalist Alex Berenson sued Twitter over the suspension of his account, which he alleged was a breach of contract. Twitter ultimately agreed to restore his account as part of the lawsuit.
Glenn Greenwald, a lawyer and liberal critic of the far-left, said that Rumble now has the right to access Google’s internal documents on “algorithmic manipulation of its search engine,” as well as requirements that “all but force” companies that are heavily reliant on Google’s infrastructure to use YouTube.
The development is especially significant because of Rumble’s rising status on the Right, with increased traffic making it the first truly viable competitor to YouTube in recent memory. Rumble has also formed an alliance with President Donald Trump’s new social media platform, Truth Social, which migrated to Rumble’s cloud earlier this year. Rumble has also joined forces with another alternative social media platform, Locals, integrating its own subscription feature with an option to sign up for Locals as well.