On a recent vacation in Berlin, Emma Watkins, a marketing assistant working in the U.K., wrote a three-star review of a bar she visited. “It was fine, but not amazing, and not what I expected from the high ranking review—it was four-point-something,” she recalls. Upon returning home, she noticed her middling review of the establishment was taken down. “When they said it was defamatory I was confused,” she says. “I did some Googling, then realized what had gone on. And suddenly the high rating for what I thought was pretty average made sense.” (Fast Company is not naming the bar so as not to fall foul of Germany’s defamation laws itself.) 

Watkins isn’t alone in losing trust in reviews of German businesses on Google. For much of the world, Google is far more pervasive than Yelp. If you want to find the best tourist attractions, bars, or restaurants in a new city outside the United States, your first port of call is likely Google Maps. 

The system works relatively well. The best restaurants are rewarded with good reviews, while would-be customers can make their own judgment on establishments that garner a two- or three-star rating. Some are weighed down by vicious one-star reviews from (likely?) nightmare customers while, in other cases, public judgment has rendered its verdict on the establishment.

Except, that is, in Germany, where practically every restaurant, bar, and tourist attraction appears to be suspiciously excellent. The country seems to be filled with four- and five-star establishments. 

In Germany, an overly permissive defamation system means that any criticism of a business is likely to be wiped out by Google’s takedown system. Fully

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