The case opened with a number that has become familiar in British competition law: £1 billion. On Tuesday, in a hearing room of the Competition Appeal Tribunal in London, a consumer advocate named Liz Coll began a claim seeking that sum from Google on behalf of roughly 20 million people who bought apps on the company’s Play Store.
Coll is not a professional litigant. She is a consumer tech policy specialist and a former manager at the charity Citizens Advice, and she has spent the better part of a decade arguing that the commissions big platforms charge end up paid by ordinary buyers. On Tuesday her lawyers made the claim formal: Google, they said, used its dominance to charge developers up to 30 percent on app sales, subscriptions and in-app purchases, and those costs were passed on to consumers.
The arithmetic the claim rests on is simple. When a developer sells an app or a subscription through the Play Store, Google takes a cut, which has run as high as 30 percent. Developers respond by raising prices. The claim argues that every British buyer who paid for an app, a dating or fitness subscription, an ad-free upgrade, or a bag of in-game coins between October 2015 and July 2026 paid a little more because of that commission.
The claim covers a sprawling category of spending. Paid apps, subscription services for music and gaming, upgrades that remove advertisements, and the small purchases inside games, the coins and gems and extra lives, all fall within its scope. The class, if certified as proposed, would number around 20 million consumers and businesses, one of the largest groups ever assembled in a British tech claim.
Google’s defense is already on the record. The company said its Play Store offers “some of the lowest fees in the market” and that it would defend itself “vigorously.” Its lawyers argued the store faces real competition on both sides, from Apple’s App Store on one flank and alternative Android platforms on the other, and called Coll’s claim unfounded.
The case did not arrive out of nowhere. The first papers were filed in 2021, and the proceedings stalled for years as related claims worked their way through the system. In September, Google’s parent company, Alphabet, agreed to pay £260 million to settle a separate class action brought on behalf of British app developers, a deal that sharpened the question hanging over the consumer claim: if the developers were compensated, why not the buyers?
The trial also sits inside a wider pattern. The Competition Appeal Tribunal has become the venue where Big Tech’s commission structures get tested, and similar cases against Apple and Sony over their app and game stores have cited the same 30 percent figure. Britain has emerged as one of the few places where these claims reach a courtroom rather than settling quietly, and the outcomes there are being watched across Europe.
For Google, the stakes extend past the money. The sum sought is large but manageable for a company of Alphabet’s size; the real risk is the precedent. A finding that a 30 percent commission is unlawful would invite copycat claims in other markets and add force to regulators who have spent years trying to force the company to open Android to rival stores and alternative payment systems.
The company’s broader position is already under pressure on that front. Courts and regulators in the United States, Europe and elsewhere have pushed Google to loosen its grip on the Play Store, and the company has made a series of concessions while insisting its fees are fair. The London claim tests the same question from the consumer’s side, where the harm is measured in the few pounds hidden inside every app purchase.
Coll’s argument, stripped down, is that hidden charges are still charges. A buyer who pays £5.99 for a subscription has no way to know how much of that sum is a commission, and the claim asks the tribunal to treat that opacity as the mechanism by which a monopoly cost was spread across millions of small transactions. Google’s answer is that the fee is disclosed enough and the competition real enough that no harm occurred.
The outcome will echo beyond Google. Apple’s App Store and Sony’s PlayStation Store have faced near-identical claims over the same 30 percent commission, and the cases have proceeded in parallel through the same tribunal. A ruling that the fee is unlawful, even against one company, would hand the claimants in the other cases a template, which is one reason the industry is watching this trial as closely as the lawyers are.
The trial will run for weeks, and neither side expects a quick resolution. Whatever the tribunal decides, the case has already accomplished one thing the claimants wanted: it has put the mechanics of the app store commission, usually buried in developer terms, in front of a public court. The £1 billion is the headline, but the question underneath is whether a 30 percent cut is a fair price for a storefront or a tax on everyone who owns a phone.
