Court Rejects Google's Attempt to Dismiss Rumble's Antitrust Lawsuit, Ensuring Vast Discovery

Case against Google

• A federal district court in California on Friday denied Google's motion to dismiss a lawsuit alleging that the Silicon Valley giant is violating federal antitrust laws by preventing fair competition against its YouTube video platform.
• The central claim is that Google's abuse of its monopolistic stranglehold on search engines to destroy all competitors to its various other platforms is illegal under the Sherman Antitrust Act of 1890, which makes it unlawful to "monopolize, or attempt to monopolize...any part of the trade or commerce among the several States, or with foreign nations."

The major obstacle to competing with Big Tech giants is that they have acquired so extreme market dominance in so many key areas of the internet that they abuse that power to prevent competition and crush any competitors who pose a challenge.

• The lawsuit brought by Rumble against Google seeks to ensure free and fair competition, so that the public is not effectively forced to use YouTube but can instead fairly choose among Google's competitors as well.

The lawsuit will now proceed to the discovery stage

• After denying Google's request to dismiss the lawsuit prior to discovery, the judge scheduled a conference at which a discovery plan would be established
• This phase is when one party can obtain a broad range of documents from the other relevant to the claims of the lawsuit
• The antitrust specialist Matt Stoller, Research Director of the American Economic Liberties Project, said that getting past the motion to dismiss stage is quite meaningful and depending on what turns up in discovery Google could be in trouble

Lawsuits like these have the ability to unite people across the political spectrum

• Regardless of whether one is an avid admirer of the modern iteration of capitalism, there is nothing to cheer when a tiny group of corporate giants can corner a market and prevent competition.
• To allow a tiny number of tech giants to maintain a stranglehold on the digital public square is self-evidently dangerous, especially as they escalate their censorship regime.

Other Antitrust Actions

• There are other antitrust actions currently pending against the Big Tech giants from both private companies and, increasingly, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC). 

https://greenwald.substack.com/p/court-rejects-googles-attempt-to?