Google agrees $135M Android settlement

Google just agreed to put $135 million into a settlement fund over claims that Android phones were quietly sending data back to Google over users’ cellular connections, even when phones were idle and apps were closed. The case is Taylor v. Google LLC in federal court in Northern California, and Google says it denies wrongdoing. (courtlistener.com) (news.bloomberglaw.com) The allegation was not just “Google collected data.” The lawsuit said Android used people’s paid mobile data allowance for background transfers to Google servers, which is closer to a taxi meter running while the car is parked than to a normal app refresh. (cnet.com) (classaction.org) That distinction matters because cellular data is something users buy in fixed chunks from carriers like Verizon, AT&T, and T-Mobile. The plaintiffs argued Google shifted part of the cost of its own data transfers onto millions of Android users without clear permission. (classaction.org) (androidauthority.com) The lawsuit was filed on November 12, 2020, and it covered Android users in the United States who used cellular data from November 12, 2017 forward. Court records show the case sat in the system for more than five years before reaching this settlement stage in 2026. (courtlistener.com) (usatoday.com) The settlement got preliminary approval on March 5, 2026, which means a judge said the deal was good enough to send out notices and open the payment process. A final approval hearing is scheduled for June 23, 2026, so the money is promised but not fully locked in yet. (docs.justia.com) (allaboutlawyer.com) The class is huge. Multiple reports say more than 100 million Android users in the United States could be covered, which is why individual payments will likely be small even though $135 million sounds large. (classaction.org) (nbcchicago.com) Some notices mention payments capped at $100, but that is a ceiling, not a likely average. After attorneys’ fees, administration costs, and millions of claims, most people should expect a prorated payment rather than a three-digit check. (news.bloomberglaw.com) (ktla.com) California is the wrinkle. Many settlement notices say California residents are excluded here because a separate California case over similar Android background data transfers produced a much larger $314.6 million verdict in state court in 2023. (topclassactions.com) (reuters.com) For Google, $135 million is real money for lawyers and plaintiffs but tiny money for the company. Alphabet reported $402.8 billion in revenue for 2025, so this settlement is roughly three-hundredths of one percent of one year’s sales. (abc.xyz) (sec.gov) The harder part for Google is not the size of this check. It is that old decisions about quiet data collection keep resurfacing in court years later, and every company now racing to build artificial intelligence systems needs enormous amounts of user data, logs, clicks, and device signals to train and improve those products. (sec.gov) (yahoo.com) That is why a case about background Android traffic from 2017 still lands in 2026 with a nine-figure bill. In tech, the product decision lasts a week, the data trail lasts years, and the lawsuit arrives when the engineers who made the call may already be working on the next platform. (courtlistener.com) (thehour.com)