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.
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