It will be very interesting to see how the US courts view this practice.
YouTube (Google) competitor Rumble has published a video of former Google VP of Search Products Marissa Mayer, showing her addressing recruits and breaking down the very essence of how Google “arranges” results on its search page.
According to what Mayer is heard saying in the video shared by Rumble CEO Chris Pavlovski, it’s simple: Google products are always shown on top. That’s regardless of popularity, metrics, or other criteria – it’s based solely on Google’s decision to “make it so.”
?BREAKING NEWS: Our legal team has unearthed a video of Google’s former VP of Search Products, Marissa Mayer, laughing to Google recruits about preferencing Google owned products in Google Search.
This will be exhibit 1 in our self-preferencing antitrust lawsuit against Google pic.twitter.com/AGD98yyILx
— Chris Pavlovski (@chrispavlovski) June 13, 2024
And this is a documented statement of fact that Rumble is hoping will help its legal case against Google, where it is accusing the giant of self-preferencing antitrust violations.
Mayer, the former Google exec, is heard talking about how the establishment of Google Finance changed the way the stock quotes were displayed (she even mentioned that her previous employer, Yahoo, had previously appeared on top).
And so before there was Google Finance, Mayer continued, “We were actually ordering the links based on various published metrics like Comscore and media metrics.”
But then, instead of continuing with the practice of actually having the top five finance sites appear thanks to their popularity – the Google Finance platform resulted in the giant “putting the Google link first.”
It’s only fair, she went on. To whom, though? To the user, the search market, the competition, the law – or only to Google itself, as an isolated behemoth?
It will be very interesting to see how the US courts view this practice. Not least because in the same video, Mayer is heard confirming that it didn’t stop with Google Finance.
“So when we rolled out Google Finance, we did put the Google link first. But for Google Maps, again, it’s the first link, and so on and so forth. And after that, it’s ranked usually by popularity,” she is heard saying.
The air of “the unbearable lightness of breaking antitrust law” – namely, Mayer is seen laughing while explaining all this to her audience – is something Rumble must be hoping to capitalize on, on top of the actual statements made.
And the place to capitalize is the court – Rumble is suing Google as an unfair competitor, a giant dominating the market and from that position, preferencing its own products, against antitrust rules.
The lawsuit that accuses Google of abuse of its monopolistic position in the market was launched in January 2021, alleging that Google (YouTube) was rigging its algorithm against competition.
Rumble CEO Pavlovski is now promising the Mayer video will be “exhibit 1 in our self-preferencing antitrust lawsuit against Google.”
