Thousands of UK businesses use Google’s Play Store to reach their customers. For many developers selling apps, games or digital content for Android devices, access to Google Play is an important route to market. That dependence was at the centre of the largest settlement the Competition Appeal Tribunal has yet approved under the UK’s opt-out collective action regime. Google has agreed to pay £260 million to settle a claim alleging that it abused its dominant position in the markets for licensable mobile operating systems and Android app distribution, to the detriment of UK app developers, by restricting alternative methods of app distribution and by imposing commissions alleged to be excessive and unfair.
The claim was brought by Professor Barry Rodger, a competition law academic, on behalf of UK-domiciled app developers who made qualifying sales through Google Play between 22 August 2018 and 31 July 2026.
In competition law terms, the conduct alleged combines two distinct forms of abuse of dominance. Restricting developers’ access to alternative ways of distributing their apps is exclusionary because it weakens or forecloses competing routes to market. Charging commissions of up to 30 per cent was alleged to be exploitative because those commissions, imposed on developers using the Play Store, were said to be excessive and unfair.
The claim was brought under Chapter II of the Competition Act 1998 and, for the earlier part of the relevant period, Article 102 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union, both of which prohibit the abuse of a dominant position.
The case was due to proceed to a substantial trial, but the parties reached a settlement shortly before it was due to begin. Google did not admit wrongdoing, and the Tribunal did not make a finding that competition law had been infringed. The settlement resolves the claim without a judgment on liability.
Even so, the size of the settlement is significant. Of the £260 million total, £160 million has been allocated to compensate the developer class. The remaining £100 million is available to meet litigation-related costs, including those of the litigation funder, insurers and lawyers.
The distribution arrangements reflect the very different sizes of the developers within the class. Developers with £7,500 or less in qualifying UK revenue can elect to receive a fixed payment of £200 rather than have their individual loss calculated. Larger claims will be assessed by reference to the developer’s own losses and its share of the overall class loss.
The settlement therefore matters particularly for small developers. For many of them, the amount at stake individually would never have justified the cost of bringing proceedings against a company the size of Google. That is precisely where the collective action mechanism becomes important. Rather than requiring every developer to bring a separate claim, the opt-out regime allows one representative to pursue the case on behalf of the entire defined class. Those falling within the class are included automatically unless they choose to opt out.
For small digital businesses, this changes the economics of enforcement. A claim that would be unrealistic for one developer to pursue alone can become viable when thousands of similar claims are brought together.
The case also raises a broader competition law issue. Digital platform cases often focus on exclusionary conduct: whether a platform restricts rivals, forecloses alternative routes to market or strengthens an already powerful position. The Google Play claim linked those alleged restrictions directly to what developers were then required to pay once alternative distribution channels had been constrained.
That connection between exclusionary and exploitative conduct is one of the most interesting aspects of the claim. It is also a question the settlement leaves unresolved. No tribunal has ruled on whether Google’s restrictions on app distribution, together with the commissions charged through the Play Store, amounted to an unlawful abuse of dominance. What the case does show is the scale of the dispute and the potential value of collective redress where alleged losses are spread across a large number of businesses.
The significance of the Google case therefore lies not only in the £260 million headline figure. It shows that the UK’s collective action regime is becoming an increasingly important route for businesses seeking compensation for alleged competition law infringements.
For app developers, the case is particularly notable because it concerns the commercial terms imposed by one of the most important digital gateways between developers and consumers. For the wider competition regime, it is another indication that enforcement is no longer confined to public regulators. Private collective claims are becoming a significant part of the way competition law is enforced in practice.
