Canada: Federal Court ruling stating search engines fall under PIPEDA

The decision of the case 2021 FC 723, requested by the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada (OPC), is ruled by the Federal Court of Canada. The Court ruled that the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act (PIPEDA) applies to search engine results, and dismissed the arguments of Google that the search engine results do not fall within the scope of the Act because the search service is not a commercial activity. In addition, the Court denied the use of PIPEDA’s journalism exception for Google, because Google does not control the content of search results and therefore is not a publisher. The case will go back to the OPC to establish whether Google violated PIPEDA.