Google is set to pay $135 million to millions of Android smartphone users in settlement fees for a privacy lawsuit despite its denial of their allegations.
Google has agreed to settle one of its many active lawsuits with a $135 million payment rather than risk being charged more in a formal trial where Android users claimed that it used cellular data without their permission, even when phones were idle or settings were turned off.
Why was Google accused of taking users’ data?
Google has reached a preliminary $135 million settlement to resolve a class-action lawsuit involving millions of Android smartphone users. The lawsuit, filed in federal court in San Jose, California, accused the company of programming its mobile operating system to collect and transmit cellular data without user consent.
Despite agreeing to the payout, Google continues to deny any wrongdoing. People who have used Android devices since November 12, 2017, can receive payments capped at $100 each.
According to the legal filings, users argued that Google “needlessly” collected cellular data that they had purchased from their mobile carriers. Lawyers were able to argue that cellular data is also property because users pay monthly fees to carriers for a specific amount of data (like 10GB or 20GB).
Plaintiffs provided evidence showing that Android devices were sending small “pings” of information to Google throughout the day. This data collection allegedly happened even when users closed Google’s apps, disabled their location-sharing features, or had their screens locked.
The plaintiffs claimed the unauthorized data was used to support Google’s product development and to help its targeted advertising campaigns.
The agreement also forces Google to obtain clear consent from users to transfer data when they first set up their phones. Google is also required to make it easier for people to stop these transfers by using a toggle in the settings menu.
Additionally, Google will be more transparent by disclosing these data transfers in the Google Play terms of service.
Experts for the plaintiffs estimated that these background transfers could total between 1 and 1.5 megabytes per day per device. While that sounds small, when multiplied across millions of devices over several years, the total value of the “stolen” data became very large.
A California state court jury awarded plaintiffs in a similar case $314 million back in 2025 when Google was found liable for using data without proper consent. By settling this federal case for $135 million now, Google is avoiding the risk of a much larger verdict at a trial that was scheduled to begin in August 2026.
What other legal battles is Google facing right now?
On January 26, Google agreed to pay $68 million to settle a different privacy lawsuit that claimed the Google Assistant “spied” on people by recording private conversations when it was triggered by mistake. Users, in that case, said they received targeted ads based on things they said in their own homes when they didn’t even mean to talk to their phones.
Just one day later, on January 27, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton finalized a massive $1.375 billion settlement with Google that ended two separate lawsuits in Texas regarding the company’s use of location data, biometric information, and its “Incognito” mode in the Chrome browser.
Google is also currently on trial in Los Angeles for making its product, YouTube, addictive to children. Meta’s Instagram is also accused. Jury selection for the case began on January 27. The trial will look at internal documents to see if the companies ignored safety concerns to increase profits.
Meanwhile, in Northern California, a federal judge recently ruled that a major antitrust lawsuit against Google, claiming that the company used illegal deals to make sure its search engine stayed the default on almost every smartphone and web browser, preventing smaller competitors from growing, can move forward.
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Source: https://www.cryptopolitan.com/google-135m-settlement-over-cellular-data/
