Lawsuit against Google’s Play Store practices gets class-action designation

The class members are Google Play Store individual consumers in 12 states, including Ohio, Michigan and Georgia, in addition to American Samoa, Guam, Northern Mariana Islands, Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands

A U.S. judge in California on Monday allowed litigation against Alphabet Inc.'s Google to proceed as a consumer class action of 21 million individuals who accuse the company of violating U.S. anti-competition laws in how it runs its Google Play app store.

(For insights on emerging themes at the intersection of technology, business and policy, subscribe to our tech newsletter Today’s Cache.)

U.S. District Judge James Donato said in a 27-page order that the plaintiffs had established the legal elements of "commonality" and other factors to form a class action that alleges anticompetitive business practices.

The class members are Google Play Store individual consumers in 12 states, including Ohio, Michigan and Georgia, in addition to American Samoa, Guam, Northern Mariana Islands, Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands.

The case is among an array of pending antitrust actions against Google, and state prosecutors in more than three dozen other states lodged similar claims against Google last year. The plaintiffs' lawyers in the newly certified class action are jointly working with those state enforcers.

Nationwide, plaintiffs have identified aggregate damages of $4.7 billion.

Google has defended its Play Store business practices, denying the claims in the case before Donato and others.