Tegernsee brewery’s beerhall scores victory against Google

Germany | Annoyed with Google’s misleading entries on waiting times for the brewery’s restaurant, the publican has sought to drag Google to court over this. On 27 August 2019, Google accepted an injunction granted to the publican to avoid further legal battles.

Tegernsee brewery – its full name is Ducal Bavarian Brewery of Tegernsee – is located on lake Tegernsee in southern Bavaria, and covers a wing of a former monastery. Owned by the aristocratic Wittelsbach family, the brewery and its attached restaurant (called Bräustüberl) have been going for over 300 years. Reportedly, the restaurant caters to about 600,000 guests each year. False information on waiting times could have hit its business hard.  

A Google spokesperson has confirmed that in July, it had already blocked the function “waiting times” for the restaurant on its search engine. Likewise, it has accepted the publican’s request to keep it off. 

Google’s search engine had indicated waiting times of 15 minutes on weekdays and 90 minutes on weekends in a chart. The restaurant’s operator, Peter Hubert, argued that these entries are untruthful and could deter guests, who often check on waiting times on the internet before making a visit.

In fact, he had been alerted to the erroneous entries by visitors as early as 2017.

What makes the case particularly interesting is that Mr Hubert decided to sue Google in Germany, rather than in the US, where Google is headquartered. As the newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung has the story, Google’s office in Hamburg refused to accept the lawyers’ writ sent through the mail three times. Only when the court sent a bailiff could the writ be delivered.

Mr Hubert’s lawyers suspect that there were two reasons why Google decided to settle out of court in the end. If the case had gone to court, the court firstly would have settled once and for all if Google can be held legally responsible in Germany too. And two, the court would have cast a verdict on the question if Google can be held responsible for its algorithms generating the entries as well.