Google has agreed to pay $135 million to settle a class action lawsuit claiming that Android phones sent data to Google over cellular networks without users’ permission, using up cellular data people had paid for. If you used an Android phone on a cellular data plan in the United States (outside California) any time from November 12, 2017 onward, you’re likely a class member in the Google Android cellular data lawsuit settlement. Payments are capped at $100 per person, but with an estimated 100 million people in the class, individual checks are projected to be around one dollar. Nothing has been paid yet — final court approval is scheduled for June 23, 2026.
Who Qualifies for a Payment
The settlement class covers all U.S. residents who used an Android mobile device to access the internet through a cellular data network at any point from November 12, 2017 through the date of final court approval. An estimated 100 million people fit that description.
California residents are not included. They’re covered by a separate case, Csupo v. Google LLC, which settled for $350 million after a Santa Clara County jury returned a $314,626,932 verdict against Google on July 1, 2025. If you’re a class member in the California case, you’re excluded from this federal one. Also excluded: Google and its officers and affiliates, the presiding judge and her immediate family, and anyone who opts out.
How Much You Can Expect
The $135 million fund is non-reversionary, meaning Google can’t take any of it back. Before payments reach class members, the fund covers attorneys’ fees (class counsel has asked for up to 29.5% of the fund, roughly $39.8 million), about $750,000 in expenses, an estimated $9.3 million in administration costs, service awards of up to $25,000 for each of the three named plaintiffs, and taxes.
What’s left is divided equally among class members who elect a payment. Payments are capped at $100 per person. Given the size of the class, the settlement notice projects individual payouts of roughly one dollar. If money remains after the first round, a second, smaller round of payments will follow.
How to Claim Your Payment
You do not need to file a traditional claim form. You do need to pick a payment method, or you may not get paid.
The official settlement website is FederalCellularClassAction.com. It hosts a payment election form where eligible class members can choose PayPal, Venmo, or Zelle. To log in, you’ll need the notice ID and confirmation code from the settlement notice you received. Angeion is the settlement administrator.
Key Deadlines and When Payments Go Out
The deadline to object to the settlement or opt out was May 29, 2026. The final approval hearing is set for June 23, 2026 at 10:00 a.m. Pacific time, before Magistrate Judge Virginia K. DeMarchi in the Northern District of California, San Jose Division.
No money moves until the court grants final approval and any appeals are resolved. If you’ve already elected a payment method, there’s nothing else you need to do; if you haven’t, do it before final approval to avoid missing out.
What the Lawsuit Alleged
The case, Taylor v. Google LLC, was filed in November 2020 by three named plaintiffs: Joseph Taylor, Mick Cleary, and Jennifer Nelson. They claimed Android devices routinely sent information to Google’s servers in the background — even when the phone was idle and even after users closed Google apps — and that these transfers happened over cellular data rather than waiting for Wi-Fi, consuming data people had paid for.
The complaint described the activity as “passive information transfers” that were “mandatory and unavoidable,” and said Google made it “impossible for users to disable” them completely. Plaintiffs argued the data collection served Google’s own interests, including targeted advertising. The Ninth Circuit revived the case in February 2024, holding that cellular data can be treated as property under California’s conversion law because it can be precisely measured and exclusively possessed.
What Google Agreed to Change, and What Google Says
Beyond the money, Google agreed to update the Google Play Terms of Service, a Google Help Center page, and Android device setup screens to disclose background cellular data transfers and get user consent. Google also agreed to disable a toggle switch that plaintiffs said gave users the false impression they could turn the transfers off.
Google denies wrongdoing. The settlement expressly states that it “does not mean that any law was broken or that Google did anything wrong,” and the court has made no ruling on the merits. Google has said the background transfers are necessary for the “security, performance, and reliability of Android devices” and that the data volume involved is “less than is used to send a photo.”