houseofgoldhealthproducts: Urgent application against Google and the federal government successful
Christiane Fux studied journalism and psychology in Hamburg. The experienced medical editor has been writing magazine articles, news and factual texts on all conceivable health topics since 2001. In addition to her work for, Christiane Fux is also active in prose. Her first crime novel was published in 2012, and she also writes, designs and publishes her own crime plays.
More posts by Christiane Fux All content is checked by medical journalists.In an urgent legal protection procedure, the Munich Regional Court largely granted two applications by For the time being, the Federal Ministry of Health and Google are no longer allowed to work together on the National Health Portal (NGP) gesundheit.bund.de.
“We have now reached a decision in express protection here. For us, this is an important success in a process that is of fundamental importance to us. The point is that the existence of the free press must not feel threatened by a state offer, ”said Jens Richter, editor-in-chief and COO of the health portal, commenting on the verdict.
The healthy.bund.de is a health portal financed by taxpayers' money, which the Federal Minister of Health Jens Spahn had set up. In the past, however, the content did not make it to the top of the Google ranking on its own.
Artificial top placement
The ministry is remedying this by cooperating with the search engine service provider Google since November 2020. Specifically, Google places the content of the national health portal in the form of info boxes prominently on its search results pages. A link in these info boxes then leads the user directly to the pages of the national health portal.
The NGP's offer "artificially" lands in a top position ahead of all other offers that have earned their ranking over the years on the basis of the Google algorithm through relevance and quality. Google itself benefits directly by displaying advertisements in the vicinity of the boxes.
"If, as a result of the cooperation, an offer that does not gain visibility through its actual quality is pushed up manually, this leads to high-quality private offers losing their visibility," explains Richter. This applies above all to mobile devices such as smartphones.
Existence-threatening for private quality portals
For free quality offers like, the only refinancing option is endangered, namely through advertising. “The only thing that we can actually influence with editorial work is to increase the quality and increase the visibility for the Google algorithms. We are working on it, we are investing there and we have to be able to refinance it, ”said Richter.
Private providers are therefore directly threatened in their existence. "That was measurable and we presented it so convincingly that the court took this into account in its judgment," said Richter.
Court: "Agreement restricts competition"
houseofgoldhealthproducts had therefore applied for an injunction against Google and the Federal Republic of Germany at the Munich Regional Court. The court joined the argument of today.
The presiding judge Dr. Gesa Lutz said in her oral judgment: "The BMG has entered into an agreement with Google that restricts competition in the market for health portals."
The operation of the national health portal by the BMG is also not a purely sovereign activity, but an economic one that has to be examined on the basis of antitrust law.
"Mesalliance between government and Google"
Philipp Welte, who is responsible for on the Burda board among other things, comments: “The Ministry of Health indirectly subsidizes the marketing of the search monopoly Google with taxpayers' money, which sells advertising alongside the state media. This mesalliance between the government and the monopoly Google is fatal because it overrides free competition and lays on a central democratic principle of our political system. "
