Google has agreed to a preliminary $135 million settlement in a class action lawsuit brought by Android users who accused it of harvesting their data without consent. The suit alleged that since November 12, 2017, Google has been illegally collecting cellular data from phones purchased through carriers, even when apps were closed or location features were disabled.
As reported by Reuters, the affected users believed Google using their data for marketing and product development meant it was guilty of “conversion.” In US law, conversion occurs when one party takes the property of another with “the intent to deprive them of it” or “exert property rights over it.”
Subject to approval from a judge, a settlement of $135 million was filed in a San Jose federal court earlier this week. The payout would be one of, if not the largest ever in a case of this nature, according to Glen Summers, a lawyer for the plaintiffs.
I’ll expect my free credit score check sometime in the next 2 years.
per affected user, right?
Problem is that there’s no real alternative right now. It’s either google or apple… I own a Samsung and I can’t even root it anymore
isnt that amount like fining regular person couple of hundred?
Probably worse than that.
More like fining a regular person $20.
Even less. Google’s net worth recently passed the $4 trillion mark.
so; $135 million is ~0.003375% of $4 trillion.
So it’s more like fining a regular person… I don’t know? But yeah, big figure to impress the ants and literal crumbs to them.
Guy made millions by scamming people. Court: “I will fine you ONE HUNDRED DOLLLURRRRS! That will teach you!” okay 🤷
The courts are already bought. This is just a show for pretending there’s “accountability” or “look we’re doing things to rich corps too”.
It’s ok if you don’t pay taxes but if you break the law, we’ll take a small cut of the profits.
Cost of doing business for them, I’m sure.
Not even worth a line item on the budget.
Concidering that they were estimated to be making 31 billion USD off the android ecosystem alone
back in 2016over 10 years 2006-2016, im sure it’s not even a drop in the bucket now.
Nice. All that money will be invested in reducing dependence to GAFAM right?
Really need to start calculating settlements like this as a function of profits. Otherwise this is just factored in as a business cost and does not actually apply as a consequence.
$135 million may seem like a lot to regular people, but it’s not for Google. If we are letting these tacit monopolies stay in place, then the kid gloves at least need to come off when they’re being dealt with. Scale up consequences so they are appropriate for the size of the corporation.
This is correct on an order of magnitude no single person can really wrap their brains around. Alphabet (the parent company of Google) made $121 billion in 2025. Not gross revenue—net profits (source). This “fine” is about 0.1% of what the execs and shareholders take home. That cost, in their revenue, wouldn’t register as any change within their accounting.
To call it a “rounding error” would be a huge exaggeration.
as much as I would love this. If it ever did become a thing, what you would see wouldn’t be companies taking the fine, you would see companies “off-branching” and having income be reported on a parent company that is contracted to the offending company. like in the case of alphabet, they would likely just migrate the android division to be a contractee that they have full control over that they never terminate the contract for. They no longer “own” android legally, they contract android to do their bidding. So when it ends up in court, it ends up as a “well Android did it not us” much like how Amazons third party delivery services worked when they tried to enforce unionization laws.
Yeah, no argument there. But I would argue companies do that kind of thing already for various reasons (many having to do with taxes).
Overall, I don’t think it’s a good argument against regulation to say “let’s regulate less because people will cheat”. People will always cheat.
It’s what the EU is doing now
This shit doesn’t stop until the people that actually do this are subject to actual criminal penalties.
Or subject to an angry mob guillotines all the CEO’s, politicians, walstreet criminals and shareholder scum
Cash they’ve got. Jail time for CEOs will work better.
Add another two zeros and then its a more positive story.
Wow! So everyone gets what $1? Lesson learned I’m sure
The subheadline:
Android users involved in the class action could lawsuit could receive up to $100 each.
lol at the grammar though
some important clarification though, that is a hard cap, realistically it will likely be quite a bit less.
Hope they’re happy with their $10 payout.
I only took part of one class action lawsuit and it was against Facebook. I still look back on that and feel a little regretful. I’m only one dude so I can’t possibly hope to take on Facebook solely in a court environment. I got $14 payout. But in doing so, means I can’t ever legally take action against them anyways.
So, don’t settle for this. Keep Google accountable.
But they won’t stop. It’s like if some people complained that I’ve been speeding consistently over the past 15 years, so the state fines me ($3.9T ÷ $130M = 30,000; my monetary worth of £2,000 ÷ 30,000) £0.06 while I’m ripping through a residential area towards a school and continue for the next 15
“Google admits that they are illegally collecting data, pays relative pittance to keep it quiet”
135 million? That’s a rounding error to the megacorps.
