Netflix said today it will expand into Canada this fall offering streamed movies and TV episodes to users there.

The launch is the first for Netflix outside of the United States, but it will not include the company’s DVD mailing service. Netflix says it’s the first time it has offered a streaming-only service.

Anyone who considered LinkedIn’s physical expansion into Canada an odd or ill-thought-out move may want to think again.  LinkedIn has been able to secure Jonathan Lister, the former country manager of Google Canada, as its own country manager in Canada.

The majority (80%) of Canadians, or 21.7 million people, used the Internet for personal reasons in 2009, up from 73 percent in 2007, according to a new survey by Statistics Canada.

Rates of Internet use increased in every province during this two-year period. The largest relative increase in Internet users occurred in New Brunswick and Newfoundland and Labrador (+15% each over 2007). Rates were highest at 85% in both British Columbia and Alberta, followed by 81% in Ontario.

For the first time ever weekly Internet usage of online Canadians has surpassed the number of hours spent watching television, according to a new report by Ipsos Reid.

Over all online Canadians are now spending more than 18 hours a week online, compared to 16.9 hours watching television. Internet usage is up from 14.9 hours last year. The number of hours watching television also increased in the last year, rising from 15.8 hours.

Last year, the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada investigated Facebook as a result of several complaints.  Then the Privacy Commissioner made some recommendations, Facebook followed them, and all in all, both sides remained quite friendly.  Only now another probe’s been launched, and the privacy advocate sounds less patient this time.

Yahoo has announced the launch of a new homepage for its Canadian users (an effort the company says will bring together the "best of the web with the best of Yahoo”). The home page lets users add apps, much like the current US version.

We’ll admit it: so far, most conversations concerning the Microsoft-Yahoo deal and antitrust issues have related to the U.S. and Europe.  Still, two potential roadblocks were eliminated yesterday when the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission and the Canadian Competition Bureau signaled their intent not to oppose the partnership.

A new batch of Google Street View imagery has been released, and it’s a significant one.  Rather than hit a few more American towns, Street View’s documented sights in two countries – Canada and the Czech Republic – for the first time.

Let’s start with the Czech Republic, where coverage is a bit more limited in terms of total footage captured.  Indeed, most of the imagery is focused on Prague and a handful of nearby, smaller towns.  Then, perhaps one or two Street View drivers headed southeast and spent a little time driving around Brno.

Google wants Canada to get with the program – the AdWords program, that is.  An exec has expressed some concern – or at least bafflement – over the idea that online advertising hasn’t caught on in Canada to the degree that it has in other countries.

Canada has a healthy economy, after all (several different groups rank it eleventh in the world according to GDP), and Internet penetration in the nation is pretty high (think 70 percent or more, although estimates differ).

Facebook is gearing up to face off with the government again—this time over privacy concerns in two different venues: the California courts and a Canadian commission.

The FBI has announced the indictment of a Canadian man for his role in processing more than $350 million for Internet gambling companies.

According to the indictment, Douglas Rennick, 34, opened bank accounts in the U.S. from 2007 to June 2009, under a variety of corporate names and "falsely represented that the accounts would be used for such purposes as issuing rebate checks, refund checks, sponsorship checks, and affiliate checks and minor payroll processing."

Police departments may not start issuing cops Facebook accounts along with their handcuffs and guns, but at least one officer feels that the social network is a valuable tool.  Constable Scott Mills shared his thoughts on the Facebook Blog this afternoon.

It wouldn’t be a day in business any more if the main focus wasn’t government intervention, would it? It appears that all of the freedom that the Internet was supposed to offer is maybe a little too much for the folks to our north. The Canadian government has issued a report that tells Facebook that many areas concerning privacy for the social networking site don’t meet the standards of Canadian privacy law.

The Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada isn’t campaigning against Facebook; representatives have actually said some very nice things about the company and social networks in general.  Just the same, following an investigation, they believe Facebook isn’t meeting certain standards.

Online Canadian teens are significantly more likely to have a social network profile than online Canadian adults, according to a new study from, Ipsos Reid.

Over three-quarters (76%) of online Canadian teens ages 12-17 now have a social network profile up from 50 percent in 2007. The rate of increase is higher than that for the online adult population, which increased from 39 percent to 56 percent over the same time period.

Google grabbed 80.17 percent of all Canadian searches for the month of April, according to Hitwise.

MSN ranked second with 8.84 percent of the search market followed by Yahoo with 7.34 percent. Ask received 2.75 percent of searches, while the remaining 41 search engines in the Hitwise Search Engine Analysis Tool accounted for 1 percent of Canadian searches.

Canadians have a reputation for being polite and kind people.  Unfortunately for around 700 customer service agents in Vancouver, this won’t be enough to save their jobs, as eBay’s announced its intentions to close a facility by the end of September. 

Seems like hardly a month goes by without news about somebody’s social network profile getting them in trouble either with their school, with work, or with the court system. The two most recent cases come out of Canada, where a college student was put on probation for badmouthing a professor online, and a litigant may have to divulge information on his private Facebook account.

Earlier this month, Bebo announced its Open Mobile global partnership program. Now this has extended to all major Canaidan operators.

Click Forensics has released a study showing that click fraud has hit 17.1%, an all-time high. For those of you who are unfamiliar, click fraud represents the act of clicking on a web advertisement to inflate click-through rates.

Remember how, in the months, weeks, and finally days before the 2008 Summer Olympics, companies were churning out all sorts of interesting little products that no one had time to use?  Google is starting to gear up for the 2010 Winter Olympics much sooner with a 3D model of Vancouver.