Niemela v. Malamas Page 16 the bill. That practice is to be discouraged. Mr. Niemela’s claim is plainly in defamation. There is no prospect of succeeding in a claim for beach of privacy. I iii. [52] Libel As I have already noted, to establish defamation a plaintiff must prove on a balance of probabilities that: 1. the impugned words were defamatory, in the sense that they would tend to lower the plaintiff’s reputation in the eyes of a reasonable person; 2. the words in fact referred to the plaintiff; and 3. the words were published, meaning that they were communicated to at least one person other than the plaintiff. [53] Turning to the first stage of the test, some of the snippets complained of do not appear to be defamatory. For example, the following snippet would not lower Mr. Niemela’s reputation in the eyes of a reasonable person: “Glenn John Niemela claims to be an attorney specializing in civil and commercial litigations. However, what he really specializes in is …”. On the other hand, some of the snippets clearly contain defamatory words that refer to the plaintiff. [54] Thus, the central question on this application is whether Google published the search results and snippets the plaintiff identifies as defamatory. [55] Mr. Niemela claims that Google was at all material times a publisher of: (a) Statements contained in text found at URLs identified in search results and (b) Snippets of text reproduced in search results. 2015 BCSC 1024 (CanLII) would accordingly dismiss that claim.