Twitter rival Gab sues Google over app store rejection

Enlarge / Google CEO Sundar Pichai. (credit: Nguyen Hung Vu)

Gab, a Twitter rival popular with the Breitbart crowd, is suing Google. The lawsuit, filed in Pennsylvania federal court on Thursday, argues that Google violated antitrust laws when it rejected Gab's app from its Android app store.

Gab says Google rejected Gab to help its business partner Twitter. Google and Twitter signed a data-sharing deal in 2015, and Gab argues the deal gave Google a financial stake in Twitter's success. The deal "makes the Google search engine immeasurably more valuable," Gab writes in its lawsuit. As a result of the deal, "the two companies' user bases have essentially been merged."

In Gab's view, the decision to block its app from the Play Store "is intended to, and does, unlawfully protect the financial and strategic benefits it enjoys by virtue of its partnership with Twitter, Gab's chief competitor, from other competitors."

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