• by Wendy Davis  @wendyndavis, Yesterday

A federal judge has dismissed conservative video platform Rumble's claims that Google violated antitrust law by allegedly promoting YouTube in the search results, and by installing YouTube on Android devices.

In a ruling issued last week, U.S. District Court Judge Haywood Gilliam, Jr. in the Northern District of California said Rumble's lawsuit, brought in January 2021, fell outside antitrust law's four-year statute of limitations.

Gilliam essentially ruled that the alleged antitrust violations, if proven true, would have affected Rumble as early as April 2014 -- meaning that Rumble's deadline to file suit expired in April 2018.

The ruling did not address Rumble's substantive antitrust claims.

The platform alleged in its complaint that Google manipulated search results to rank YouTube highly, effectively diverting traffic to YouTube and depriving Rumble of “the additional traffic, users, uploads, brand awareness and revenue it would have otherwise received.”

Rumble also alleged that Google required smartphone manufacturers to install YouTube in order to license the Android operating system.

Google argued in a written motion for judgment in its favor that self-preferencing doesn't violate antitrust laws, but that even if self-preferencing could be anti-competitive, the evidence did not show that Google either rigged search results or thwarted installations of Rumble on Android devices.

Google also said Rumble's claims were untimely, arguing that the alleged antitrust violations would have started in 2014 -- soon after Rumble launched.

Last year, Rumble filed a separate antitrust suit against Google. That matter was recently transferred to U.S. District Court Judge Kevin Castel in the Southern District of New York.