Google signed the largest carbon-removal agreement in its history on September 16, a deal in Brazil that Reuters reported will support a new model for pulling carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere. The same day, in a London courtroom, the company closed a different kind of obligation: a 260 million pound settlement with British app developers over the fees it charged them on the Play Store.
The two events have little in common except their timing and their sender. One is a bet on a technology that barely exists at commercial scale. The other is the price of a dispute the company has been fighting for years. Together they show a company paying out on two fronts of its reputation.
The carbon-removal agreement is the more forward-looking of the two. Google has spent years buying removal credits from startups that filter carbon from the air, capture it in rock, or bury plant matter in ways that keep the carbon locked away. The Brazil deal, its largest to date, extends that practice to a new geography and, according to Reuters, a new removal model.
Google has not said how many tons the contract covers or what it will pay. The company framed the deal as a way to support removal methods that are not yet proven at the scale the company will eventually need, a strategy it has pursued through its own procurement and through collective buying groups it helped found.
The removal market remains small and expensive. Credits that promise durable, verifiable removal can cost hundreds of dollars per ton, orders of magnitude above the price of offsets that simply avoid future emissions. Google’s willingness to sign large contracts at those prices is one of the few forces pushing the market toward scale.
Analysts said the Brazil deal matters less for the tonnage than for the signal. Corporate buyers of removal credits have been the most reliable source of early demand, and a large purchase from one of the world’s biggest technology companies tells removal startups there is a customer for capacity that will take years to build.
The UK settlement carries a different weight. The Competition Appeal Tribunal approved an agreement under which Google will pay 260 million pounds, roughly 353 million dollars, to resolve claims from thousands of app developers over the commission it charged on the Play Store. Google had already made similar payouts in other markets, and the settlement closes one of the last big European claims over its app-store fees.
The Play Store dispute is part of a long-running global fight over how much app stores may charge developers. Apple and Google have both been forced to open their payment systems and cut their fees under pressure from regulators and courts. The UK settlement, while small relative to Google’s revenue, adds another line to that ledger.
Google did not admit wrongdoing in the settlement. A person close to the matter said the company viewed the deal as a way to put the litigation behind it rather than to concede the underlying question of whether its fees were lawful.
The carbon deal and the settlement point in different directions for investors. One is a discretionary expense on a technology whose financial return is distant and uncertain. The other is a legal cost with a clear, final number. Neither is large enough to move Google’s results, which remain anchored to advertising.
The company’s climate commitments have drawn more attention as its energy use has grown. Google’s data centers, and the AI workloads they run, have pushed its emissions higher even as the company buys more clean energy. Carbon removal is the part of that math Google cannot fix with power-purchase agreements, and the Brazil deal is its largest attempt so far to address it.
Google has been buying carbon removal for years, through direct contracts with startups and through Frontier, the collective buying group it helped organize. Its purchases have covered direct air capture, enhanced rock weathering and biochar, methods that differ in cost and in how reliably their carbon stays buried.
Brazil is a natural place for such a deal. The country has abundant land and agricultural byproducts, and its climate allows the kind of biomass-based removal that stores carbon in soil and rock. Google’s decision to anchor its largest removal contract there is partly a matter of geography.
The Play Store settlement closes one of the last major European claims over app-store fees. Google has already paid developers in the United States and changed how it bills them in several markets. The UK deal, at 260 million pounds, is small enough that Google can treat it as a rounding error on its quarterly results.
For the removal startups, a large Google contract is the difference between a pilot and a business. The market has been waiting for buyers to commit to tonnage at scale, and Google’s Brazil deal, whatever its size, is the kind of anchor order that lets a startup finance the next plant.
For now, analysts said, the two announcements read as a single company managing its obligations on two timelines: the immediate cost of a settled lawsuit, and the long-term cost of a climate that its own computing infrastructure is helping to change.
