Google spent years letting parents believe the “Designed for Families” corner of its app store was the safe aisle, and the Google Play settlement over that promise now has a final price: $8.25 million, or about $12.55 per claim before anyone takes a cut. That isn’t accountability. It’s what falls out of Google’s couch cushions while it looks for the remote.
On Oct. 23, U.S. District Judge P. Casey Pitts of the Northern District of California granted final approval in A.B. v. Google LLC, No. 5:23-cv-03101. The lawsuit claimed that apps in Google’s “Designed for Families” program collected personal information from children under 13 without parental consent, and that Google used it to target those kids with behavioral advertising, in violation of the federal Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act and state laws. Google denies wrongdoing, and the judge’s order says the settlement is not an admission of “any wrongdoing, fault, violation of law, or liability by Google.”
The branding is what stings. According to the court’s May preliminary approval order, the plaintiffs alleged the program “purported to screen thousands of apps” for compliance with children’s privacy laws, racking up 4.5 billion downloads, while certain apps in it allegedly collected kids’ data anyway. So you did exactly what every parenting article tells you to do. You picked the section with “Families” in the name. Turns out the word was doing a lot of unpaid work.
How much will I get from the Google Play settlement?
Less than $12.55. Probably closer to $9.
Judge Pitts’s order puts the figure at $12.55 per claim “if all claims are valid,” based on 656,974 claims received by Sept. 8, and it notes that amount is “lower than the initial estimate.” Back in May, the preliminary approval order said the plaintiffs projected $40 to $200 per claimant, assuming only 1 to 2 percent of an estimated 3.8 million to 10 million class members would bother to file. (Judge Pitts’s final order remembers that original estimate as $40 to $110. Either way, nobody was promising $12.55.) Instead, a whole lot of tired parents filled out the form. Good for you. Bad for the math.
And $12.55 is the gross. In a separate Oct. 23 order, the judge awarded class counsel $2,062,500 in fees, 25 percent of the fund, plus $50,866.96 in expenses after trimming travel costs, and $1,500 in total service awards to the three guardians who represented the class. As OpenClassActions reported, the lawyers had asked for $2,475,000, or 30 percent. Settlement administration costs come out too; the administrator, Kroll, estimated them at $364,779 back in May. Run those numbers against 656,974 claims and you land around $8.78 each, which is my back-of-the-envelope estimate, not an official figure. If some claims get tossed as invalid, everyone else’s share goes up a bit.
Judge Pitts wrote that even $12.55 is “in line with approved settlements in comparable data privacy class actions.” He’s right, and that’s the problem. Across the industry, kids’ privacy gets priced like a coupon. If the bill for what this lawsuit alleged is a rounding error, building an app store that actually keeps ad tracking away from 8-year-olds will always look like the more expensive option. Google, you are not a struggling startup. Act like the family brand you’ve been selling.
When will the Google Play settlement pay out?
Nobody knows yet. Claims closed Sept. 14, and as of Oct. 24, OpenClassActions reported that no payment date had been announced. Payments go out after the approval becomes final, including the window for any appeal. The order notes there were no objections and only 21 people opted out, which is about as quiet as these things get, but quiet isn’t a calendar.
If you filed, you don’t need to do anything else. Claimants picked a check or an electronic payment, and OpenClassActions says checks expire after 90 days, so cash it when it shows up. The fund is non-reversionary, meaning none of it goes back to Google. According to OpenClassActions, leftover money is slated for the Center for Digital Democracy and Common Sense Media. If you didn’t file, I’m sorry, the deadline has passed.
So picture it: some weeknight next year, a parent standing at the kitchen counter, one kid asking for a snack and the other asking for the tablet back, opens an email saying a deposit of about nine dollars has landed. She’ll spend it on chicken nuggets and not think twice. She did her part. She read the label that said “Families” and believed it.