A record settlement, days before trial
Alphabet has agreed to pay £260m to settle Professor Barry Rodger v Alphabet Inc and others (CAT Case No. 1673/7/7/24), an opt-out collective action before the UK's Competition Appeal Tribunal accusing Google of charging "unfair and excessive" commissions on Play Store transactions. The deal landed on August 27-28, 2026, days before a ten-week trial was due to open on September 15 (City A.M.). Under the settlement, £160m goes to UK developers who sold apps on the Play Store between August 2018 and July 2026, while £100m covers litigation funding and legal fees (The Next Web). Google admits no liability, and the CAT must still approve the deal at the September 15 hearing before any money moves (Claims Journal / Bloomberg).
Damien Geradin of Geradin Partners, who represented the developers, called it "the largest settlement to date" under the UK's collective-action regime, introduced by the Consumer Rights Act 2015. That regime allows a class representative to sue on an opt-out basis — every eligible developer is automatically included unless they choose to leave — which is precisely what let Professor Rodger, a Strathclyde competition law academic, bring a claim on behalf of thousands of small businesses that individually could never have afforded to litigate against Alphabet.
What was actually alleged
The case, certified by the CAT as opt-out collective proceedings, alleged Google abused a dominant position in Android app distribution and licensable mobile operating systems in two ways: tying developers to Play Store distribution through technical and contractual barriers to alternatives like sideloading, and charging a 30% commission on in-app purchases that was "both excessive and unfair" (CAT case page). The claim originally sought over £1bn; the £260m settlement represents roughly a quarter of that figure — not unusual for pre-trial settlements, but a reminder that certification of a claim is not a finding of liability, and settlement value should not be read as a court's judgment on the merits.
The case for the regime, stated fairly
The strongest argument for opt-out collective actions is straightforward: without them, a single app developer facing a 30% platform fee has no realistic path to challenge it. Litigation against a company with Alphabet's resources costs millions and takes years; no rational small developer would sue alone over a dispute worth a few thousand pounds. Pooling thousands of small claims into one action, funded by professional litigation financiers who take a cut only if the case succeeds, is what makes the claim economically viable at all. Geradin's point about money reaching developers "less than three years after the claim was filed" is also fair — that is fast by the standards of competition litigation, and faster than waiting for a full liability trial and any subsequent appeals.
Where the model strains
But the mechanics of this settlement illustrate the limits of relying on retrospective litigation to police platform conduct. Nearly 38% of the £260m — £100m — goes to funders and lawyers rather than the developers who allegedly overpaid, and because Google admits nothing, the settlement changes nothing about Play Store commission structures going forward. Developers who sold apps in 2019 get a one-time payment; developers selling apps in 2027 pay the same commission Google has always charged, unless something else changes it.
That something else is already underway. On October 22, 2025, the Competition and Markets Authority designated Google's mobile platform — Android, Play Store distribution, and Chrome/Blink — with strategic market status under the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act 2024, the first time UK law has given a regulator standing ex-ante conduct powers over a Big Tech platform (gov.uk). The CMA is now consulting on requirements covering app review transparency, ranking fairness, and the ability of developers to "steer" users to alternative payment methods — the same substantive concerns the Rodger litigation raised, but addressed prospectively through conduct requirements rather than retrospectively through a multi-year tribunal claim.
Two tracks, one set of facts
This is the more defensible division of labour. Backward-looking collective actions compensate developers for commissions already paid and create a genuine deterrent, since Alphabet now has a real settlement history rather than an abstract legal risk. But designing the actual rules — what a fair app review process looks like, whether 30% is an appropriate commission ceiling, how sideloading should work — is better done through the CMA's ongoing, evidence-led SMS process than reopened in each new tribunal claim. Two related actions, brought on behalf of Epic Games and of millions of UK Android users, remain pending before the same CAT panel; regulators and litigants alike should resist turning every future Play Store dispute into its own decade-long trial when a functioning ex-ante regime is already being built to do that job going forward.
The test of whether Play Store commissions are fair will increasingly be set by the CMA's conduct requirements, not by the next collective claim.