Cost of doing business for them, I'm sure.
this post was submitted on 29 Jan 2026
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Not even worth a line item on the budget.
Concidering that they were estimated to be making 31 billion USD off the android ecosystem alone ~~back in 2016~~ over 10 years 2006-2016, im sure it's not even a drop in the bucket now.
Add another two zeros and then its a more positive story.
Guy made millions by scamming people. Court: "I will fine you ONE HUNDRED DOLLLURRRRS! That will teach you!" okay 🤷
The courts are already bought. This is just a show for pretending there's "accountability" or "look we're doing things to rich corps too".
It's ok if you don't pay taxes but if you break the law, we'll take a small cut of the profits.
Really need to start calculating settlements like this as a function of profits. Otherwise this is just factored in as a business cost and does not actually apply as a consequence.
$135 million may seem like a lot to regular people, but it's not for Google. If we are letting these tacit monopolies stay in place, then the kid gloves at least need to come off when they're being dealt with. Scale up consequences so they are appropriate for the size of the corporation.
This is correct on an order of magnitude no single person can really wrap their brains around. Alphabet (the parent company of Google) made $121 billion in 2025. Not gross revenue—net profits (source). This “fine” is about 0.1% of what the execs and shareholders take home. That cost, in their accounting, wouldn’t register as any change in revenue.
It's what the EU is doing now
as much as I would love this. If it ever did become a thing, what you would see wouldn't be companies taking the fine, you would see companies "off-branching" and having income be reported on a parent company that is contracted to the offending company. like in the case of alphabet, they would likely just migrate the android division to be a contractee that they have full control over that they never terminate the contract for. They no longer "own" android legally, they contract android to do their bidding. So when it ends up in court, it ends up as a "well Android did it not us" much like how Amazons third party delivery services worked when they tried to enforce unionization laws.
Yeah, no argument there. But I would argue companies do that kind of thing already for various reasons (many having to do with taxes).
Overall, I don't think it's a good argument against regulation to say "let's regulate less because people will cheat". People will always cheat.
This shit doesn't stop until the people that actually do this are subject to actual criminal penalties.
Cash they've got. Jail time for CEOs will work better.
Or an angry mob guillotines all the CEO’s, politicians, walstreet criminals and shareholder scum
isnt that amount like fining regular person couple of hundred?
Probably worse than that.
More like fining a regular person $20.
Even less. Google's net worth recently passed the $4 trillion mark.
so; $135 million is ~0.003375% of $4 trillion.
So it's more like fining a regular person... I don't know? But yeah, big figure to impress the ants and literal crumbs to them.
Wow! So everyone gets what $1? Lesson learned I’m sure
The subheadline:
Android users involved in the class action could lawsuit could receive up to $100 each.
lol at the grammar though
some important clarification though, that is a hard cap, realistically it will likely be quite a bit less.
But they won't stop. It's like if some people complained that I've been speeding consistently over the past 15 years, so the state fines me ($3.9T ÷ $130M = 30,000; my monetary worth of £2,000 ÷ 30,000) £0.06 while I'm ripping through a residential area towards a school and continue for the next 15
"Google admits that they are illegally collecting data, pays relative pittance to keep it quiet"
per affected user, right?
Any C-levels, current or former, who were in charge during the unethical behaviour should be made to pay this. Either they knew or they should have known. Seize their assets, take them back to basic income and lifestyle and only then take the remainder of the fine from the company.
Yeah, I know this is a pipe dream. These people have their arms lodged so deep in politicians it makes their mouths flap, so it'll never happen, but it would stop this sort of behaviour right quick.
Agreed, LLC should only cover bankruptcy expenses and not penal responsibilities.
135 million? That's a rounding error to the megacorps.
I have an Android phone, where's my money?
Nice. All that money will be invested in reducing dependence to GAFAM right?
You make a billions over illegal practice and then pay 130mln penalty. Money checks out
IMO they should throw the ceo in jail
Isn't that like three days of revanue?
Problem is that there's no real alternative right now. It's either google or apple... I own a Samsung and I can't even root it anymore
I’ll expect my free credit score check sometime in the next 2 years.