Most legal claims ask you to do something. Fill in a form, find a receipt, dig out a serial number, tick a box before a deadline. This one did the opposite. If you bought an app, a subscription or a handful of in-game coins on an Android phone in the UK at any point in the last eleven years, you are almost certainly already a claimant in a £1.2 billion case against Google, and nobody asked your permission.
Hearings opened at London’s Competition Appeal Tribunal on October 6, more than five years after the claim was first filed. The case is brought by consumer advocate Liz Coll on behalf of roughly 20 million UK consumers and businesses, and the argument is simple enough to fit in a sentence: Google charged developers a commission of up to 30 percent on the Play Store, developers priced that in, and shoppers paid it.
Are you in this?
- Where: the UK only. This is a British case under British competition law. US readers are not covered by it
- When: purchases made between October 1, 2015 and July 31, 2026
- What counts: paid apps, in-app digital purchases such as coins, characters or extra lives, and subscriptions, including paying to remove ads
- What does not: purchases made inside Google’s own first-party apps
- Do you still need an Android phone? No. You needed one during the period, not today
- Do you have to do anything? No. It is an opt-out claim, so you are in unless you removed yourself, and the opt-out window for the most recently added class members closed on May 15, 2026
What the case actually alleges
Coll’s lawyers argue that Google abused a dominant position. On Android, the Play Store is where apps come from for the overwhelming majority of users, and until recently Google’s billing system was where in-app money had to flow. The claim is that a 30 percent cut on that flow was not a competitive price but a position being exploited, and that the cost ended up on consumer receipts rather than being absorbed by developers.
If that sounds familiar, it is the same theory that drove Epic Games against Apple over iOS, and the same theory behind the separate UK consumer claim over the App Store that has already produced compensation.
That £60 figure, about $79, is worth treating as an illustration rather than a forecast. It is what you get by dividing the maximum claim by the size of the class. It assumes the claim succeeds, assumes it succeeds in full, and ignores the portion that goes to legal representation and administration. Real distributions in collective cases routinely land below the headline arithmetic.
Google’s answer
Google is not settling this one, at least not yet, and its defence rests on the argument that Android is the open platform in a two-platform market.
A Google spokesperson says the lawsuit ignores the choice the Android ecosystem offers, and that the Play Store has “some of the lowest fees in the market.” The company’s lawyers describe the claim as unfounded and argue the store “faces strong competitive constraints both on the developer and consumer sides.”
Google’s position at the Competition Appeal Tribunal, October 2026
There is something to that. Android does permit sideloading and rival stores in a way iOS historically did not, and Google has cut its developer rates. The counterargument the Tribunal will have to weigh is whether the theoretical availability of alternatives amounts to real competitive pressure when the default store ships on the phone and almost nobody leaves it. If you want a sense of how thin the alternatives have been in practice, our rundown of the alternative app stores available in the EU and elsewhere is a short list for a reason.
Eleven years, five of them in court
This claim was filed in July 2021 on behalf of what was then described as 19.5 million UK Android users. It survived Google’s attempt to have it thrown out, was certified for trial, picked up additional class members, and only now is being argued on its merits.
The length of that runway is the single best predictor of when anyone sees money, which is to say: not this year, and probably not next.
What counts as a qualifying purchase
The class definition is broader than most people assume, and the exclusion is narrower than you would guess.
| Type of spending | In the claim? | Examples |
|---|---|---|
| Paid apps | Yes | Any app you paid for up front on the Play Store |
| In-game currency and items | Yes | Coins, gems, characters, extra lives, battle passes, cosmetic packs |
| Subscriptions | Yes | Dating apps, music services, fitness apps, news apps, anything billed monthly through Google |
| Paying to remove ads | Yes | Upgrading a free app to an ad-free tier counts as a subscription or in-app purchase |
| Google’s own first-party apps | No | Purchases made directly inside apps Google itself publishes are carved out |
| Physical goods | No | The claim is about digital commissions, not shopping apps |
One free app with a single £2.99 unlock somewhere in 2018 is enough to put you in the class. That is how you get to 20 million people without anyone opting in.
The demographic twist nobody expected
Because the class is defined by owning an Android phone rather than by any kind of self-selection, its composition follows UK smartphone demographics. Ofcom’s figures on that produce a result most people get backwards.
Fifty-seven percent of UK smartphone users over 65 are on Android, against 31 percent of 16 to 24 year olds. The group most likely to be owed money here is also the group least likely to be reading about it on a tech site, which is the practical problem with opt-out distributions: the money is allocated on paper long before anyone has to be found.
How this fits the wider app store reckoning
Coll’s claim is one piece of a much larger pile. The app stores have been losing, settling or conceding ground in multiple jurisdictions for three years running.
| Case | Scale | Status |
|---|---|---|
| Coll v Google (UK consumers) | up to £1.2bn | On trial now, hearings opened October 6, 2026, around eight weeks listed |
| Rodger v Google (UK developers) | $260m | Settled. Tribunal approved in September 2026, covering Play Store sales from August 2018. No admission of liability |
| Epic Games v Google | Worldwide terms | Settled March 2026. Google agreed to expand billing options and cut developer fees |
| UK consumer claim over Apple’s App Store | £1.5bn | Produced compensation for consumers over App Store practices |
| Epic Games v Apple | Injunctive | The case that opened the whole argument about app distribution and in-app payment rules |
Taken together, the pattern is that the 30 percent cut is no longer being defended as a market price anywhere it gets tested properly. It is being settled around, trimmed, or litigated on the question of who ultimately paid it.
What US readers should know
None of the above puts a dollar in an American pocket. The Coll claim is UK-specific, brought under the Consumer Rights Act 2015, and limited to UK-domiciled consumers and businesses. US Play Store spending has run through its own separate track, including the multi-state settlement over Play Store practices, and those have had their own eligibility windows and claim processes.
The structural difference is worth noticing, because it changes what you have to do. UK opt-out collective proceedings sweep you in by default. US settlements usually require a claim, and often a deadline you will miss if you are not paying attention. Apple’s $250 million Siri settlement, where you need a device serial number to claim, is the opt-in model at its most demanding. Sony’s PSN store credit payout, where 4.4 million wallets simply got topped up with no form at all, is the opposite end of the same spectrum.
A word on the inevitable scams. Large publicised claims attract fake claim sites within days. In this case there is nothing to claim and no form to fill in, which makes any message asking you to “register for your Google Play payout” a reasonable thing to delete. Official information for the Coll claim lives at appstoreclaims.co.uk, and nobody legitimate needs your card details to pay you compensation.
What to watch next
- Whether Google settles mid-trial. It did exactly that with the UK developer claim in September and with Epic in March. A settlement now would end the question of whether pass-on can be proved
- The pass-on argument itself. The hardest part of this case is not showing a 30 percent commission existed. It is showing how much of it reached consumer prices, and that is an economics fight between expert witnesses
- The distribution mechanism. If Coll wins, how the money actually reaches 20 million people, most of whom do not know they are owed anything, becomes the story
- Knock-on claims elsewhere. A UK win on consumer pass-on would be a template other jurisdictions could copy
- Whether Play Store fees move again. Google has already trimmed developer rates once under settlement pressure this year
The bottom line
If you are in the UK and you have ever spent money inside an Android app, you are a class member in a £1.2 billion claim that opened in court this week, and you did not have to do anything to get there. You also do not have to do anything now, which is the genuine good news buried under the big number.
What you should not do is budget for £60. That figure is the maximum claim divided by the class, before legal costs, before any reduction in the award, and before an appeal that would almost certainly follow a loss on either side. The case is being argued over eight weeks. The money, if it arrives, arrives years from now.
Sources and further reading
- UNILAD Tech: 20 million Android users automatically included in massive £1bn lawsuit
- BusinessWorld: Google fights £1 billion UK lawsuit over app store fees
- Corporate INTL on the £1.2bn Google Play Store UK trial
- Hausfeld on the Tribunal’s certification judgment in Coll v Google
- UK Google Play Store Claim: frequently asked questions and class definition
- PocketGamer.biz: Google faces £1bn Play Store commission trial in the UK
- Global Legal Post: CAT approves the £260m collective action settlement with Google
- TNW: Google accused of overcharging 20 million UK consumers over Play Store fees
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