A case claiming £1.2 billion in damages from Google over allegedly excessive app store fees has gone to trial.

The trial, which began on Tuesday at the Competition Appeal Tribunal in London, is a class action on behalf of roughly 20 million UK consumers and businesses who made purchases through the Google Play store or made purchases via an Android phone between 1 October 2015 and 31 July 2026.

Lawyers on behalf of the plaintiffs said in court filings that Google had extracted “unfair prices to the detriment of users” through fees of up to 30 percent for digital purchases.

Developer fees

The claim includes paid apps, subscription payments, and upgrades to unlock features, as well as purchases within games.

Google’s roughly 30 percent cut of typical purchases was allegedly passed along to consumers in the form of higher retail prices, the action claims.

Google said it offers some of the lowest fees in the market and that the market in which it operates is competitive.

The company denies it has the market power to have exercised excessive control, arguing in a court filing that it “is not dominant in the market for the facilitation of digital content transactions between developers and consumers”.

The Competition and Markets Authority last year found that Google and Apple form an “effective duopoly” in the market for mobile operating systems, and last October designated both as holding strategic market status in the field, opening the way for targeted interventions in the way they do business.

In October of last year, Apple lost a similar UK class-action lawsuit claiming it imposes “excessive and unfair” fees on software downloaded from its App Store, with the CAT ruling it had abused its dominant position from October 2015 to the end of 2020 through its developer fees.

The claimants estimated at the time that 36 million consumers would be entitled to damages of about £1.5bn.