• by Wendy Davis , March 9, 2026

A federal judge has granted preliminary approval to Google's $135 million settlement of class-action claims that it misappropriated Android users' cellular data allowances by collecting app-related information from their phones when the apps were not in use.

If accepted by U.S. District Court Judge Virginia DeMarchi in San Jose, the settlement will resolve a dispute dating to 2020, when Joseph Taylor and other Android users sued Google for allegedly wrongly consuming cellular data they had purchased.

In addition to a monetary payment, the deal requires Google to tell users that the cell data transfers occur “in the background, when you are not directly interacting with your device," and to inform users that some cell data transfers "cannot be turned off."

The complaint by Taylor and the others against Google drew on a 2018 study by Vanderbilt University professor Douglas Schmidt, who reported that idle Android devices transferred data to Google hundreds of times each day.

Those data transfers "interfere with plaintiffs’ property interests, depriving them of data for which they, not Google, paid," the complaint alleged.

U.S. District Court Judge Virginia DeMarchi in San Jose originally dismissed the complaint, ruling that cellular data isn't the kind of property that can be misappropriated.

The plaintiffs successfully appealed that decision to the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, arguing in a written brief that Google “secretly hijacked their cellular data, without their consent.”

“Those who secretly hijack services from others should fully expect that they will be forced to pay for those services if and when they are caught,” class counsel wrote.

Google countered that the plaintiffs were attempting “to manufacture liability” for common practices.

"Data transmissions on Android devices include transmissions to and from Google servers to enable a range of useful functions, from ensuring that devices have up-to-date security protocols to enabling features of Google applications like Maps and Gmail,” the company argued to the 9th Circuit.

The appellate judges sided against Google two years ago. 

“Although intangible, cellular data serves the particular purpose of enabling access to the cellular network; it can be precisely limited by a user’s data plan; it can be measured when being used; and it can be attributed to a particular user based on that user’s unique identifier code," Circuit Judges Bridget Bade, Eric Miller and Lawrence VanDyke wrote in an unsigned opinion that revived the complaint.

DeMarchi has scheduled another hearing in the case for June 23, after which she will decide whether to grant the settlement final approval.