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The health portal NetDoktor.de GmbH has taken legal action against a cooperation between the German Federal Ministry of Health (BMG) and Google and has been provisionally granted a preliminary injunction. The judgment pronounced by the 37th Civil Chamber of the Munich I Regional Court is not yet final.

How did NetDoktor’s two applications to the Regional Court come about in the first place? NetDoktor sees the BMG’s cooperation with Google as a violation of competition and antitrust law in Germany because BMG infoboxes with factual and scientifically-based information were highlighted by Google in Google searches for diseases in such a way that private providers have no chance of being placed in the same position as the BMG. The so-called position „0“ has been reserved only for BMG and not for other private providers such as NetDoktor.
In the reasons for the ruling, it was emphasized that this was associated with a restriction of competition on the market for health portals. NetDoktor also sued because they feared a reduction in user traffic and therefore a loss of web revenue, triggered by the highlighted content of the BMG’s National Health Portal (gesund.bund.de)of the BMG.
The BMG will initiate a legal review and is currently discussing further steps because „people would expect relevant and trustworthy information about health and pandemic,“ according to a Google spokesperson.
Other associations, such as the Association of German Newspaper Publishers, for example, criticized the legality of the BMG’s information portal in the first place, saying it was not compatible with the state freedom of the media. The FDP parliamentary group also sees it as a violation of competition because of distortion of competition.

Source: Aerzteblatt