Judge grants final approval of $700 million Android app antitrust settlement

SAN FRANCISCO (CN) — A federal judge Thursday granted final approval to a $700 million settlement over Google’s monopoly of the Android smartphone application market.

U.S. District Judge James Donato said he didn’t see a reason for denying final approval of the settlement, but the Barack Obama appointee raised several issues with the $85 million in attorneys’ fees request by the consumers.

The settlement resolves claims brought by a class of consumers and a bipartisan coalition of attorneys general from all 50 states — along with the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands — that Google violated state and federal monopoly laws.

Under the agreement, Google paid $630 million in restitution — minus costs and fees — for people who made purchases on the Google Play Store between Aug. 16, 2016, and Sept. 30, 2023, and were harmed by the Silicon Valley giant’s anticompetitive actions. The tech company additionally agreed to pay the states an additional $70 million in costs, fees and penalties.

Since Google paid the $700 million settlement in May 2024, the settlement and states’ fund have grown to $660 million and $75 million, respectively, through investments, according to Karma Giulianelli of Bartlit Beck, an attorney for the consumer class.

Donato granted preliminary approval of the settlement on Nov. 20, 2025, and ordered that eligible consumers in the class be notified. Since then, more than 106 million eligible class members have received direct notice of the settlement, with less than 500 opting out and zero objecting, according to Jayme Weber, an attorney with the Arizona Attorney General’s Office.

No claims are required for affected people to receive a payment. Automatic payments will occur through PayPal or Venmo, though people can instead request to use an alternative payment method such as Zelle or electronic transfer. According to the states, each settlement consumer is eligible to receive at least $2, and may receive a higher amount in proportion to their Google Play spending from August 2016 through September 2023.

David Sonnenreich from the Utah Attorney General’s Office described the settlement as a “joint effort” between the consumer class and the states, saying they worked very closely together to reach a settlement with Google. The California Attorney General’s Office celebrated the final approval as the “first step in getting money back into the pockets of consumers.”

Counsel for the consumer class is asking the court for $85 million to cover litigation costs, approximately 13.5% of the $700 million common fund, plus nearly $8.6 million in unreimbursed expenses and $5,000 awards for each of the six individual consumer plaintiffs.

The states are not requesting fees out of the common fund.

Giulianelli told Donato that the $85 million request is reasonable because their lawyers had invested close to 100,000 hours of time in the case over the three years, with the consumers taking on a large chunk of labor up until the settlement was reached a month before the case was set to go to trial.

She further said the states are offering no objection to the fee request, explaining that typically states are “very aggressive in fee requests of private counsel.”

However, Donato could not get past the massive amount of hours the consumers’ counsel are claiming in the case, telling Giulianelli that the “pyramids were built in less time” and “Atlas himself did not lift that number of hours in his life.”

“You’re telling me 33,000 hours over three years in a case that was decertified and did not reach trial, I’m sorry, that is just not reasonable,” he said.

Giulianelli tried pushing back, explaining that the case required an “enormous amount of work,” and that they were satisfied there was no unnecessary duplication in the number of hours billed.

However, the judge remained unmoved.

“Why couldn’t you do that in 40,000 hours, or 50,000? Not 98,200. I can barely say it without gasping,” he said.

Donato did not indicate how he would remedy the attorney’s fee issue, telling Giulianelli he may appoint a special master to go through the bills and “trim away the water and inefficiency.”

Giulianelli said after the hearing she was pleased the judge granted final approval of the settlement, but declined to comment further.

A representative for Google did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

In addition to the monetary funds, the settlement requires Google to implement certain changes to the Play Store to stop its anticompetitive behavior and open markets to competition.

Under the agreement, Google must allow all developers to let users pay through in-app systems other than Google Play Billing for at least five years. It also must let developers tell users about alternatives to Google’s billing system, including contacting users via email and using in-app notifications.

Additionally, Google must allow the installation of third-party apps outside the Google Play Store on Android phones for at least seven years. It can’t require developers to simultaneously launch app catalogs on the Play Store when they’re launched on another app store.

Google must also make compliance reports for five years.

While the consumer class and states settled with Google in September 2023, two other major antitrust suits brought by Epic Games and Match Group moved towards trial that November.

On Oct. 31, 2023, the Match Group announced it had settled with Google and voluntarily dismissed its claims.

Epic proceeded to trial alone and ultimately declared victory when a jury found that the Google Play app store and its billing services are an illegal monopoly.

Following the verdict, Donato issued a permanent injunction requiring Google to open up its Google Play Store on Android devices to third-party app stores and distribute those third-party app stores through Google Play by a set date, in the United States.

Google appealed the jury’s verdict and the court’s subsequent order all the way to the Supreme Court, which rejected the tech giant’s request to delay changes to Google’s app store in October 2025.

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