In a time where online reviews can make or break local businesses, it makes good sense to allow businesses to act against fake reviews. Indeed, many platforms allow users to only place reviews if they actually used the relevant service (for instance by booking and paying for accommodation through the platform). Since the aggregate star rating from all Google Reviews automatically comes up when searching for a business on Google, it can have a particularly strong impact on a business. Thus, so long as Google puts little restrictions on the ability of users to review a business, it is important for business owners to be able to act against abusive reviews.

However, it is important to heed the district court's warning that "caution is necessary" in cases where a takedown of negative reviews is requested. It will not always be easy to determine when a review is "fake", since reviews by their nature are subjective. On the one hand, reviewers must be able to express frustration over bad service, even if it is strongly worded; on the other, there must also be some protection for reviewed businesses against gross exaggerations. It seems likely that principles developed in defamation law will inform this balancing exercise.

In this case, three elements seems to have contributed substantially to the outcome: (a) the reviews were written by fake persons and relate to fake events; (b) the reviews were intended to damage the owner out of spite; and (c) the reviews showed structural similarities and together formed a pattern. On these facts, this Kat is happy with the outcome of the decision, but it is interesting to think to what extent each of them is necessary and sufficient to warrant removal of a review.

As for (a), the fact that the review were written by "fake" persons should not, by itself, be dispositive. In fact, one might argue that it would be prudent to use a pseudonym on the internet, especially when commenting on a platform as public as Google. On the other hand, the fact that the reviews appeared to relate to non-existent transactions, in my view rightly, received a lot of weight. Then again, how is Google to disprove a business holder's allegation that the names of the clients are not familiar to them and that the relevant transaction never took place? Furthermore, the first review of 7 April seems to also be affected by the order (though this is not clear as the decision is anonymized), but that review related to an actual customer experience.

Element (b) seems tantamount to finding bad faith on the part of the reviewers. Indeed, writing a negative review about a non-existent transaction almost by definition seems to be done with intent to harm the business. The interesting question is if a bad faith requirement would be applied to reviews about real transactions. That is, would removal of those reviews only be warranted if an intent to harm the business can be established?

Element (c) perhaps supports a finding of bad faith in the present case, but this Kat feels it should be particularly cautiously applied in future cases. After all, it might be tempting for business owners to argue that many of their negative reviews fit the abusive pattern and here, too, Google might not be in a good position to argue otherwise. In fact, in the present case two reviews fell under the scope of the order that did not really seem to fit the pattern and lacked various elements listed by the court in par. 4.3. One of these actually complimented the tailor's service, but complained he was too expensive ("Go this place only if you want to burn extra cash as the owner did provide very nice service"); another was so vague that it wasn't even clear what the user was trying to say ("… seems like the kind of guy who would tell on you if he catches you cheating in class. regards TB").

Lastly, an interesting question is whether the decision provides a basis for a business' competitors to challenge fake positive reviews [support for this hypothesis might be found in a 2018 decision by the court of Lecce, which jailed a man for selling fake reviews on TripAdvisor, see here] Again, due to the prominence of Google's search and review services, these may give a business an important competitive advantage, but the intention to harm competitors will be much less direct. All in all, the decision offers much to digest and even more to look forward to.