I think this is giving way too much credit to Google. WebMD has existed in some form since 1996 and first went live as WebMD in 1999. They've been the web's most popular health information publisher from the beginning. This was before Google became the web's dominant search engine.
If Google has an issue here, it's that it tries to rank things based on a more or less mathematical look at its actual popularity at the time of indexing. It isn't aiming to promote sites based on quality in order to make them popular. If a site is where other sites are pointing and people are visiting, then Google is going to rank them highly (modulo whatever the hell other secret sauce goes into the algorithm - i.e. punishing slow load times), even if the information content is bad. WebMD was very much already the web's most popular source of health information well before they hit the top of any Google search.
This isn't even a problem specific to the web, let alone Google. Medical textbooks were available at the time Chicken Soup for the Soul was a best seller. Consumers quite often prefer shittier information to better.
If Google has an issue here, it's that it tries to rank things based on a more or less mathematical look at its actual popularity at the time of indexing. It isn't aiming to promote sites based on quality in order to make them popular. If a site is where other sites are pointing and people are visiting, then Google is going to rank them highly (modulo whatever the hell other secret sauce goes into the algorithm - i.e. punishing slow load times), even if the information content is bad. WebMD was very much already the web's most popular source of health information well before they hit the top of any Google search.
This isn't even a problem specific to the web, let alone Google. Medical textbooks were available at the time Chicken Soup for the Soul was a best seller. Consumers quite often prefer shittier information to better.