A federal judge in San Jose has given final approval to an $8.25 million class settlement resolving claims that Google’s AdMob advertising business collected data from children who used apps in Google Play’s “Designed for Families” program. U.S. District Judge P. Casey Pitts of the Northern District of California signed the order on October 23, 2026, ending a case filed in June 2023.
The headline number is modest for Google. The more useful figures for anyone building or monetizing apps are in the order itself: 656,974 claims, an estimated gross $12.55 per claim before fees and costs, and a class that the parties estimated at 3.8 million to 10 million children. Google did not admit wrongdoing, and the order says so in plain terms.
What the case alleged
The lawsuit, A.B. v. Google LLC (No. 5:23-cv-03101-PCP), was brought by six minor children in three states through their guardians against Google LLC and AdMob Google Inc. According to the court’s preliminary approval order, the plaintiffs alleged that Google collected children’s personal information without parental consent in order to target them with behavioral advertising, in violation of state and federal law including the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act.
The core of the complaint was the gap between what the Designed for Families program promised and what happened inside the apps. The plaintiffs alleged that the program purported to screen thousands of children’s apps for compliance with children’s data laws, that those apps generated 4.5 billion downloads, and that some of them nonetheless collected children’s data illegally. As MediaPost reported, the apps at issue included games from developer Tiny Lab Productions such as Fun Kid Racing and Monster Truck Racing, and the parents argued that Google should have known the data AdMob collected from those apps was coming from children.
Google tried to have the case thrown out as untimely, arguing it had banned Tiny Lab from the Play Store in 2018 and that the limitations period for most claims had run before the suit was filed. Class counsel countered that AdMob allegedly kept collecting data from children who had already downloaded the apps through 2021. Judge Pitts denied the motion to dismiss on June 18, 2024. These remain allegations; the case settled before any finding on the merits.
The settlement by the numbers
The terms come from the court’s final approval order and the earlier preliminary approval order:
- Fund: $8.25 million, non-reversionary, so unclaimed money does not go back to Google.
- Class: everyone in the U.S. who was under 13 when they downloaded or used an app from Google Play and from whom Google allegedly collected, used or disclosed personal information, from April 1, 2015, to the present.
- Claims: 656,974 received as of September 8, 2026.
- Estimated payment: $12.55 per claim if all claims are valid, down from the plaintiffs’ earlier estimate of $40 to $110.
- Fees and costs: class counsel had asked for up to $2,475,000 in fees plus up to $79,905.40 in expenses. On October 23, 2026, Judge Pitts awarded $2,062,500, one quarter of the fund, after voicing concern that one firm’s rates and hours were excessive and rejecting some travel expenses. Administration was estimated at $364,779, and service awards of up to $500 go to each of three guardians.
- Objections and opt-outs: none and 21, respectively, by the August 4, 2026 deadline.
- Distribution: pro rata to valid claimants, administered by Kroll Settlement Administration, with a post-distribution accounting due to the court.
One detail is worth reading carefully. $8.25 million divided by 656,974 claims is about $12.56, so the $12.55 figure is a gross number: the whole fund split across claimants before anything is deducted. Fees, costs, administration and service awards are paid from the fund first, so with roughly $2.06 million going to class counsel alone, the net payment per valid claim will be meaningfully lower. The order does not state a net per-claim amount.
Judge Pitts accepted the lower figure anyway, writing that it “would still be in line with approved settlements in comparable data privacy class actions.” He cited a LinkedIn privacy settlement that paid $14.81 per claim. The class counsel were Silver Golub & Teitell LLP and Lexington Law Group, LLP.
Why AdMob, and not just the app developer
COPPA’s core rule is that operators of child-directed services, and operators with actual knowledge that they are collecting from children, need verifiable parental consent before collecting personal information from kids under 13, and that includes persistent identifiers used for behavioral advertising. When an advertising SDK is embedded in a child-directed app, the SDK provider can become a collector too. This case was about that second layer: the ad network inside the app, not only the developer who built it.
That theory is not new for Google. In December 2021, New Mexico’s attorney general settled two cases, one filed in 2018 against Tiny Lab and several ad companies, with Google named as a defendant (Balderas v. Tiny Lab Productions, et al.), and Google agreed to pay $5.5 million in total, and one against Google over its education products. Under that settlement, Google agreed to changes to Google Play’s families policies, including:
- requiring developers to complete a target audience and content form for every active app;
- using its own rubric to check whether an app appeals to kids regardless of what the developer declares;
- requiring families-program apps to use only advertising SDKs that self-certify compliance with children’s privacy laws, and requiring mixed-audience apps to age-screen users before serving ads;
- requiring disclosure of data collected from children, including through SDKs; and
- maintaining a mechanism to tell AdMob which apps are child-directed so AdMob can treat them consistently.
The private class action covered the conduct those measures were meant to address, with a class period that reaches back to 2015. MediaPost reports that the Designed for Families program has since been deprecated.
What app publishers and ad-tech teams should take from it
The settlement does not impose new conduct rules on Google; it is a cash resolution. The lessons are for everyone else in the app supply chain.
- A platform badge is not a compliance program. Designed for Families required developers to certify COPPA compliance. The allegation was that certification did not stop the data flow. If your children’s app relies on a store program or an SDK’s self-certification, you still need your own evidence of what leaves the device.
- Test the SDKs, not the documentation. Capture network traffic from your app on a test device and confirm that advertising identifiers and device data are not sent to ad networks for child users, or are sent only with child-directed flags set. Our piece on SDK-driven privacy lawsuits shows how plaintiffs build these cases from traffic captures.
- Flag child-directed status everywhere it can be flagged. Ad networks generally offer a way to tag requests as child-directed. Set it in code, verify it in traffic and record when you did it.
- Age-screen neutrally in mixed-audience apps. An age gate that pre-fills an adult birthdate invites children to click through and will not hold up.
- Remember the old data. The plaintiffs argued collection continued after the developer was banned. When you remove an app or an SDK, find out what happens to installed copies and to data already collected.
Class actions are only one route. The Federal Trade Commission and state attorneys general enforce COPPA directly, and the penalties there can dwarf this settlement, as our coverage of the $20 million Genshin Impact COPPA order shows. We have also written about the FTC’s wider crackdown on kids’ privacy, the class actions aimed at edtech companies, and the recurring ways children’s privacy programs fail. Industry groups have proposed their own fixes too, including the IAB’s framework for modernizing children’s privacy law.
Frequently asked questions
Can I still file a claim?
The final approval order says claims were received through the settlement process and that 656,974 had been filed as of September 8, 2026. The order does not restate the claim deadline. Check the official settlement website run by Kroll Settlement Administration before assuming a late claim will be accepted.
Did Google admit it broke the law?
No. The order states that neither the settlement nor the order is an admission of any claim, wrongdoing or liability by Google.
Why is the payment so much lower than first estimated?
More people filed claims than the parties expected. The plaintiffs originally projected a one to two percent claims rate; with almost 657,000 claims, the fixed fund is split many more ways.
Does the settlement change how AdMob works?
The final order describes a cash fund, a release and a plan of allocation. It does not describe new business practice commitments by Google. Separate policy changes to Google Play’s families program were part of the 2021 New Mexico settlement.
Does this affect app developers who used AdMob?
Developers were not defendants, and the release protects Google and the other released parties. But the case is a reminder that developers of child-directed apps carry their own COPPA obligations for the SDKs they embed.
At roughly a dozen dollars a claim, no family will notice this payment. Google may not either. The number that should get attention is 656,974, the count of parents who filled out a form about apps their children used years ago, and which plaintiffs’ firms will now cite as evidence that the next children’s privacy class will show up to claim.
