Google has added a warranty attribute to the Merchant Center product data specification so that retailers running Shopping ads and free listings in Canada can state how long Quebec law requires certain new electronics and household appliances to keep working. The Help Center notice describing the change is dated only "October, 2026", with no day given, and it ties the attribute directly to Quebec's Bill 29. Merchants can submit the data now. Display on ads and free listings, according to Google, "will begin later this year."

In Short

Quebec passed a law that says new appliances and electronics must keep working for a set number of years, and shops have to show that number next to the price, ads included. Google added a box in its shopping product data where stores can type in that warranty length so it can appear on their Google Shopping listings. Filling in the box is optional, the warranty will not actually appear on Google until later in 2026, and Google says the stores, not Google, are responsible for following the law.

What Google published

The notice is short. It runs to two paragraphs on the Google Merchant Center Help Center, filed under announcements, and its first sentence sets out the legal trigger. "Under Québec's Bill 29 merchants selling certain new electronics and household appliances to consumers in Québec must display a mandatory legal warranty duration near the product price, including on digital ads," according to Google.

The sentence that follows describes the response: "We recently added the warranty [warranty] attribute to our product data specification to allow merchants serving Shopping ads and free listings in Canada to provide this information."

Unlike many Merchant Center changes, this one names its legal basis. The notice links the phrase "Bill 29" to the bill's page on the website of the National Assembly of Quebec, so the connection between the attribute and the provincial law is Google's own, not an inference.

The second paragraph shifts responsibility. "Providing the warranty attribute for products in Google Merchant Center is optional," the notice states. "While Google provides this new attribute to help you display the required warranty information in Québec, merchants are ultimately responsible for ensuring that their product data and on-site disclosures comply with all applicable local laws, including Québec's Bill 29."

The title of the notice refers to "products targeting Canada", while the law it cites covers sales to consumers in Quebec. The notice does not say whether the warranty duration will be shown to shoppers across Canada or only to those in Quebec once display begins.

The law behind it

Bill 29 is formally titled "An Act to protect consumers from planned obsolescence and to promote the durability, repairability and maintenance of goods". According to the National Assembly of Quebec, it was sponsored by Simon Jolin-Barrette, Minister of Justice, and introduced as a government bill during the 43rd Legislature, 1st Session. It received assent on October 5, 2023, and appears in the Statutes of Quebec as 2023, chapter 21. The Assembly's page gives its coming into force as "le 5 octobre 2023, sauf exceptions" - October 5, 2023, with exceptions.

The warranty rules Google refers to are one of those exceptions. They are part of a second phase that took effect on October 5, 2026, exactly three years after assent. According to Osler, the Quebec government published the final implementing regulation on December 17, 2025, and the amendments to the Consumer Protection Act enter into force on October 5, 2026. Gowling WLG places the regime in sections 38.1 to 38.9 of the Consumer Protection Act and says that both the warranty regime and the regulation take effect on that date.

Which products, and for how long

The law creates a legal warranty of good working order. It applies to new goods sold or leased long-term from October 5, 2026, runs from the day of delivery and covers parts and labour, according to Gowling WLG. The durations, as set out by BCF Business Law in an article published on Mondaq, are:

  • Six years: stoves, refrigerators, freezers, air conditioners and heat pumps
  • Five years: washing machines, dryers and dishwashers
  • Four years: television sets
  • Three years: laptop and desktop computers, video game consoles, cellular telephones and tablets

Fourteen product types, then, across four duration tiers. Gowling WLG notes that the government can add goods by regulation, and that businesses cannot exclude or limit the warranty.

Where the duration has to appear

The display rule is what brings the law into advertising. According to BCF Business Law, merchants must show the warranty period "prominently near the advertised price of the product", and that covers transactional websites, in-store price tags, advertisements and flyers. For long-term leases, the duration sits next to the retail value instead. Osler describes the same obligation, saying merchants must state the duration near the advertised price "in a prominent manner". Manufacturers, for their part, must publish the information online so that retailers can meet their own display duties, according to Gowling WLG.

Google's own reading is narrower in wording but points the same way: a mandatory duration "near the product price, including on digital ads." A Shopping ad is, in effect, a price with a product image attached. Under that reading, a television sold to a consumer in Quebec through a Shopping ad needs "4 years" somewhere close to the number.

How the attribute works

The technical detail sits on a separate product data specification page for the warranty attribute, which the announcement links. The attribute is described there as optional, though it may be required for products subject to certain local rules, with Bill 29 given as the example.

It has three sub-attributes:

  • duration: an integer giving the length of the warranty. Required for products.
  • duration_unit: either month or year. If left blank, it defaults to month. For Bill 29 in Quebec, the unit must be set to year.
  • mileage: an integer in kilometres, used only for vehicle ads and optional.

In text feeds (TSV or CSV), the value is written as duration and unit separated by a colon, without quotation marks. A four-year television warranty becomes 4:year; a three-year mobile phone warranty becomes 3:year. XML feeds use a g:warranty element containing g:duration and g:duration_unit. The Merchant API has its own formatting, set out in Google's API reference.

The default unit matters. Because duration_unit falls back to month, a merchant who submits only the number 4 for a television would be stating a four-month warranty, not a four-year one. Google's specification separately says Quebec warranties should be given in years.

The same specification page lists vehicle ads in Japan as another use of the attribute, where the period is given in months, the default, and the mileage sub-attribute applies. So the attribute is not built for Quebec alone. The Canadian use is the one tied to a statutory display obligation.

A gap between the law and the listings

The dates do not line up neatly. Quebec's display obligation applies to goods sold from October 5, 2026. Google's notice is dated October 2026 without a day, and it says display of the warranty information on ads and free listings "will begin later this year" - meaning some point before the end of 2026, with no specific date.

Until display begins, a merchant can put the duration into a Merchant Center feed, but that data will not appear on the Shopping ad or free listing a Quebec consumer sees. Google's notice does not address how merchants should treat that interval. It does say that merchants are "ultimately responsible" for compliance, and it extends that responsibility to "on-site disclosures" - the merchant's own product pages - as well as product data.

This is not the first time a regulatory requirement has reshaped the Merchant Center specification. In April 2025, Google replaced EU energy efficiency class attributes with a certification attribute covering graphical energy labels, among other specification changes that year. More recently, Google said it would make pickup cost and minimum order value mandatory for in-store pickup products in the UK, Switzerland and EEA countries, with enforcement from September 30, 2026. The warranty attribute differs from that change in one respect: Google calls it optional, even though the underlying legal duty to disclose is not.

Why this matters for advertisers

Canada has drawn several Google advertising policy changes in October 2026. On October 21, PPC Land reported that Google will require US and Canadian financial advertisers to prove regulatory authorisation before certain ads run, starting in early 2027. The warranty attribute is narrower in scope but more immediate: the Quebec obligation is already in force.

For retailers selling appliances and electronics in Canada through free listings and Shopping ads, the change adds a field to product feed management that has a legal deadline behind it but no Google enforcement mechanism attached, at least in the notice as published. Google does not say that products lacking the attribute will be disapproved or limited. The consequence of missing it, if any, rests with Quebec law rather than Merchant Center policy.

Feed tooling is also changing underneath. Google's Content API for Shopping was scheduled to shut down on August 18, 2026, leaving the Merchant API as the programmatic route for merchants that send product data through an API. Merchants submitting warranty data that way will need the Merchant API format rather than the text or XML syntax.

Merchant Center documentation has been changing quietly in other areas too. On October 13, PPC Land reported that Google stopped blocking products with low-quality images from ads and free listings, although a 500 by 500 pixel minimum still takes effect on January 31, 2027.

Several questions remain open in Google's materials. The notice does not give a date for when warranty durations will start showing. It does not say how the duration will be rendered on an ad, whether it will be shown outside Quebec, or whether products in the 14 covered categories will be flagged if the attribute is missing. It also does not address goods outside those categories, where a merchant might choose to supply a warranty voluntarily.

Timeline

Summary

Who: Google, through Google Merchant Center, and merchants selling certain new electronics and household appliances to consumers in Quebec through Shopping ads and free listings in Canada. The underlying law, Bill 29, was sponsored by Quebec Minister of Justice Simon Jolin-Barrette.

What: Google added a warranty attribute, with duration, duration_unit and mileage sub-attributes, to the Merchant Center product data specification so merchants can supply the legal warranty duration that Quebec requires to be shown near the price, including on digital ads. The attribute is optional, the unit must be set to year for Quebec, and Google says merchants remain responsible for compliance.

When: The Google notice is dated October 2026, with no day. Bill 29 received assent on October 5, 2023, and its warranty provisions took effect on October 5, 2026. Display of warranty data on ads and free listings begins later in 2026, according to Google.

Where: Shopping ads and free listings in Canada, for sales to consumers in Quebec. The same attribute also serves vehicle ads in Japan.

Why: Quebec's legal warranty of good working order sets durations of three to six years for 14 product types and requires merchants to display them prominently near the advertised price. Google's notice links the attribute directly to Bill 29, and the attribute gives merchants a field to carry that duration into Google's shopping surfaces.