Google fights a £1.2bn UK claim over Play fees it agreed in March to cut

Divide the claimants' figure (as much as £1.2 billion, their lawyers say, according to Bloomberg ^[5]) by a class of roughly 20 million ^[1] and it comes to £60 a consumer ^[16]. The class period runs from October 1, 2015 to July 31, 2026 ^[6], or 130 months ^[17], so a full award works out to roughly £111 million for each year of purchases ^[18] (about £5.50 per consumer per year ^[19]) across apps, in-app items and subscriptions ^[7]. Neither report includes Play's UK revenue or describes a remedy beyond damages for that period, so the claim cannot be measured against Play's margins.

Google's first defence is market definition. Its lawyers argued that dominance depends on genuine market power, and that Google has none in the market where digital content changes hands between developers and consumers ^[2]. Play "faces strong competitive constraints both on the developer and consumer sides", they said, Apple's App Store among them ^[4]. Against that, the Competition and Markets Authority has found that Apple and Google hold an effective duopoly in mobile platforms ^[15]. If the tribunal accepts Google's narrower market, the claim fails before anyone counts damages.

If it finds dominance, the money turns on pass-on. Coll's lawyers argue developers passed the commission through to buyers, and they cite Google itself: when it sold YouTube Premium through Apple's App Store, it passed on the commission it was charged ^[8]. Citing the defendant's own pricing is a sharp choice. It shows how one large seller priced one product, though, and the class is 20 million people ^[1] who bought from many developers. The third outcome is a full finding that sits beside the tribunal's ruling last year that Apple abused its dominance to impose excessive fees on developers ^[14].

The claimants' filings did not soften it. "Free of competitive shackles, Google has exploited its market strength to extract unfair prices to the detriment of users and generated extraordinary returns for almost two decades," the lawyers wrote, according to Bloomberg ^[10]. Google said before the trial that "Android gives people more choice than any other mobile platform in deciding which apps and app stores they use, with Play offering some of the lowest fees in the market" ^[3].

Google's settlements show where it chose to spend. In March it reached a worldwide settlement with Epic Games and said it would expand billing options and cut developer fees ^[11]. Epic's London suit had been due to be heard alongside Coll's ^[12]. Last month Google paid £260 million to settle a claim brought for app developers, without admitting liability ^[9]. The sum is about 22% of the consumer claim's headline ^[20]. Google has asked the tribunal to dismiss Coll's case ^[2].

The two UK claims also pull against each other. Coll's case needs developers to have passed the commission on; whatever share they absorbed was their own loss, and the developers' claim is already settled ^[9].

In my view the trial prices the past, or rather it prices a fee Google has already said it will change. The terms developers pay from here are being set in settlements and by regulators. The European Commission fined Google €890 million this year under the Digital Markets Act, €430 million of it for restricting how developers steer users to payment options outside Play ^[13].

The view is wrong if a ruling here, or the Court of Appeal upholding the Apple decision next year ^[14], gives developers a legal basis to challenge the post-Epic rate as well as the old one.