Google agrees $135M settlement

Google just agreed to pay $135 million over a claim that Android phones were quietly using people’s paid cellular data to send information back to Google, even when the phones were sitting idle. The case is Taylor v. Google LLC in federal court in Northern California, and the settlement website went live this week. (federalcellularclassaction.com) (courtlistener.com) The core allegation was not “your phone used data when you opened an app.” It was “your phone used data in the background anyway,” which is like a taxi meter running while the car is parked in your driveway. (bloomberglaw.com) (classaction.org) The lawsuit says Android devices transferred information to Google over mobile networks without permission, and that mattered because mobile data is something users buy from carriers in fixed buckets. If a phone burned that bucket in the background, the plaintiffs argued Google was using something consumers had paid for. (federalcellularclassaction.com) (bloomberglaw.com) This case started on November 12, 2020, and the proposed settlement was filed on January 27, 2026. The class definition on the official site covers people in the United States who used an Android device on a cellular network from November 12, 2017 to the present, except people covered by a separate California case called Csupo v. Google LLC. (courtlistener.com) (federalcellularclassaction.com) Google did not admit wrongdoing. The settlement notice says the court did not decide that Google did anything wrong, which is the usual trade in cases like this: cash now instead of years more fighting over engineering details and damages. (openclassactions.com) (bloomberglaw.com) The size of the class explains why the checks will not be huge. Reports tied to the settlement estimate roughly 100 million United States Android users could be included, so dividing $135 million across that many people turns a headline number into a much smaller per-person payment after fees and costs. (cnet.com) (nbcchicago.com) The immediate practical step is not a long claim form. Multiple reports say many eligible users will receive notice automatically and can use the settlement site to pick a payment method, with deadlines in late May 2026 and a final approval hearing scheduled for June 23, 2026. (cnet.com) (openclassactions.com) This is also separate from Google’s other privacy fights. Texas reached a much larger $1.375 billion agreement with Google in 2025 over allegations involving location tracking, incognito browsing, and biometric data, which shows how many different parts of Google’s data machinery are being challenged at once. (news.bloomberglaw.com) (bracewell.com) For small businesses and local advertisers, this settlement does not automatically rewrite how Google Ads works next week. What it does is add one more legal record saying background collection, consent language, and default settings are now expensive places for big platforms to get sloppy. (classaction.org) (bracewell.com)