Google Assistant Settlement Final Approval: $68 Million Deal Approved, Arbitration Claimants Carved Out

Yes: the Google Assistant settlement received final approval on Tuesday, October 13, 2026, when U.S. District Judge Beth Labson Freeman of the Northern District of California approved Google's $68 million deal resolving claims that Assistant-enabled devices recorded people without the "Hey Google" wake word, and awarded class counsel about $22.6 million in fees. Class members who filed claims by the August 27, 2026 deadline will not be paid at once; distribution waits until the time to appeal runs out and any appeal by an Objector is resolved.

The order, which Courthouse News reports runs 31 pages and describes the settlement as "excellent," closes a Class Action that began in July 2019. It also closes one of the stranger procedural chapters in modern consumer litigation. The same judge who approved the settlement had earlier held that Google waited too long to compel arbitration. She then rejected Google's attempt to block 69,507 consumers from leaving the certified class to pursue Mass Arbitration instead. The settlement's class definition reflects that history: people who took the arbitration route and signed individual releases are not part of the deal.

Google Assistant settlement final approval: what Judge Freeman ruled on October 13

The case is In re Google Assistant Privacy Litigation, No. 5:19-cv-04286-BLF, pending in the San Jose division. Google LLC and Alphabet Inc. filed the proposed settlement late on Friday, January 23, 2026. Judge Freeman granted preliminary approval on March 19, 2026, held the fairness hearing on October 1, 2026, and entered the final approval order twelve days later. Mealey's, MLex, and Courthouse News each reported the October 13 order.

The order does four things that matter to class members and practitioners:

• It approves the settlement under Rule 23(e). The court found the $68 million deal fair, reasonable, and adequate. According to Courthouse News, Judge Freeman weighed the risks both sides faced if the case went to trial.
• It confirms the two Settlement Class definitions (one for purchasers, one for people who were recorded) for settlement purposes.
• It grants class counsel's fee and expense request. Courthouse News puts the fee award at $22.6 million plus $1 million in reimbursed litigation expenses. Mealey's describes it as "more than $22 million."
• It cuts the service awards. Each of the four Named Plaintiff class representatives asked for $10,000. The court awarded $5,000 apiece.

Why did Google settle the Google Assistant privacy lawsuit?

Google denies wrongdoing and has admitted no liability. The settlement documents describe the deal as a way to avoid further litigation risk. That risk was real. By late 2025 the case had a certified purchaser class, a ruling that Google had waived arbitration, and a court order preserving tens of thousands of individual arbitration claims. Each of those exposures pushed in the same direction. The plaintiffs, for their part, had lost certification of the broader privacy classes. So a settlement that brings privacy claimants back in, even at a low per-person figure, gave both sides something they could not easily get at trial.

The underlying allegation was about "false accepts." These are moments when a device misheard ordinary speech as a wake word, began recording, and in some cases sent the audio to Google. According to Reuters, the plaintiffs alleged that recordings captured this way were used for targeted advertising. They also alleged that some were sent to human reviewers working for outside contractors.

Who qualifies for the $68 million Google Assistant settlement?

The settlement creates two classes. Both share a class period of May 18, 2016 through March 19, 2026. A person can belong to both.

Feature	Purchaser Settlement Class	Privacy Settlement Class
Who is in it	Users who bought a Google-made device in the U.S. or its territories during the class period	Users of Google Assistant, and members of their households, whose communications were captured through a false accept or disclosed to a third-party review vendor
Example devices	Google Home, Home Mini, Home Max, Nest Hub, Nest Hub Max, Pixel phones	Any Google Assistant-enabled device, including devices where Assistant was downloaded
Points per claim	4 points per device, up to 3 devices (12 points maximum)	1 point
Class counsel's pre-approval estimate	About $18 to $56 per device	About $2 to $10
Arbitration carve-out	Excluded if, by Aug. 27, 2026, the person served an arbitration demand or notice and signed an individual release	Same exclusion
2024 opt-outs	Excluded unless they rejoined by filing a timely, valid claim	Not applicable

The claim form defines a "User" as someone whose Google account was linked to at least one Google Assistant-enabled device during the class period. It defines a "Household" as a group of people sharing a common home. The household concept matters. It lets a spouse or roommate who never owned the account claim the privacy point if their speech was captured.

Can I still file a claim in the Google Assistant settlement?

No. The claim deadline was August 27, 2026. The same date was the deadline to opt out or object. The final approval order does not reopen the claims period, and settlement summaries report no late-filing route. Class members who did not file a claim are still bound by the release, because they did not opt out. They will receive nothing from the fund.

How much will class members get, and when will payments be sent?

How much will I get from the Google Assistant settlement?

Each claimant's payment depends on their points as a share of all points claimed across valid claims, applied to the net settlement fund. The net fund is $68 million minus the roughly $22.6 million fee award, the $1 million in expenses, the $20,000 in service awards, and notice and administration costs. That leaves something in the low-to-mid $40 millions before administration costs. The per-point value cannot be fixed until the Claims Administrator finishes validating claims.

Class counsel's estimates when the deal was announced were $18 to $56 per purchased device and $2 to $10 for a privacy-only claim. One claims-tracking site has reported that a September 17, 2026 administrator filing counted more than 1.5 million claims and projected roughly $8 to $20 per point. That would mean about $32 to $80 per device and $8 to $20 per privacy claim. That figure could not be confirmed against a second source, so it should be treated as an estimate.

The fund is non-reversionary. None of the $68 million returns to Google, however many claims are paid. Money left after the first distribution, from uncashed checks for example, goes to a second distribution among claimants who cashed their first payment where that is feasible. Only if redistribution is not practical does the remainder go to a court-approved nonprofit as a Cy Pres award.

When will Google Assistant settlement payments be sent?

No payment date has been set. Under the settlement, distribution follows the Effective Date. That date arrives only after the final judgment can no longer be appealed or any appeal is resolved. Federal Rule of Appellate Procedure 4(a)(1)(A) gives a party 30 days from entry of judgment to file a notice of appeal. If judgment was entered on October 13, that window closes on Thursday, November 12, 2026.

Mealey's reports that several class members filed objections, including Joy Thomas and Joshua Kirkley. An objector who appeals to the Ninth Circuit can delay payment by a year or more. If no appeal is filed, payments could plausibly begin in late 2026 or early 2027 once claim validation is done. Claims-tracking sites had projected that range before the ruling.

How much did the lawyers get? Fees, costs and halved service awards

Class counsel, Scott+Scott Attorneys at Law LLP and Lowey Dannenberg LLP under the settlement agreement, asked for up to one-third of the fund. Reuters put that ceiling at about $22.7 million when the deal was filed. The court awarded about $22.6 million, or roughly 33.2 percent of $68 million, plus $1 million in expenses.

That percentage is well above the Ninth Circuit's 25 percent "benchmark" for common-fund fee awards under In re Bluetooth Headset Products Liability Litigation, 654 F.3d 935 (9th Cir. 2011). District courts in the circuit may depart from the benchmark when the case was risky, long, or produced an unusual result. A seven-year case with a contested certification order, a contested waiver fight, and a mass opt-out dispute is the kind of record that supports an upward departure under the Common Fund Doctrine. MLex reported before the hearing that Judge Freeman had voiced concerns about the fee request. The final order granted the fee but trimmed the representatives' awards. That combination suggests the court tested the request and accepted it.

The service award cut is the more pointed signal. Halving a $10,000 request to $5,000 per representative saves the class $20,000. That is small next to a $68 million fund, but it reflects growing scrutiny of incentive payments in the Ninth Circuit. Practitioners should expect objectors to cite it in later Google settlements.

Seven years from VRT NWS to settlement: the Google Assistant litigation timeline

Date	Event
July 2019	Belgian broadcaster VRT NWS reports reviewing more than 1,000 Google Assistant recordings obtained from a contractor; 153 appeared to have been captured by mistake
July 25, 2019	Kumandan v. Google filed in the Northern District of California; the Galvan case was later consolidated with it
Class certification order	Purchaser class certified for breach of contract and a UCL "unlawful" claim predicated on breach and Cal. Bus. & Prof. Code § 22576; proposed privacy classes denied for lack of a qualifying class representative
2022 to early 2024	Google moves to compel arbitration; Judge Freeman finds Google waived arbitration, calling the delay "troubling" (Law360, Courthouse News)
2024	Class Notice to the certified purchaser class; opt-out window runs
Feb. 14, 2025	Court denies Google's motion to reject a mass exclusion request covering 69,507 consumers who chose individual arbitration
Jan. 23, 2026	$68 million settlement filed for preliminary approval
Mar. 19, 2026	Preliminary approval; class period closes
Aug. 27, 2026	Deadline to claim, opt out, object, or qualify for the arbitration carve-out
Oct. 1, 2026	Final approval hearing
Oct. 13, 2026	Final approval granted; $22.6M fees, $1M expenses, $5,000 service awards
Nov. 12, 2026	Notice of appeal deadline, if judgment was entered Oct. 13

The certification history explains why the settlement class is broader than the class that was litigated. Only purchasers were certified, and only on contract-based theories. The Wiretap Act and California Invasion of Privacy Act theories that drove the original complaints never had a certified class. The settlement uses a Settlement Class to bring privacy claimants back in for release purposes. That is why the privacy point carries so little value: those claimants had no certified class when the deal was made.

What happened to the 69,000 consumers who opted out to arbitrate?

They left the class, and the settlement does not pull them back unless they chose to rejoin. This is the part of the case most relevant to mass arbitration practice.

The waiver ruling

Google's consumer terms contain an Arbitration Agreement with a Class Action Waiver. But Google did not move to compel arbitration until years into the case. According to Courthouse News coverage of the waiver ruling, Judge Freeman found Google could have moved as early as January 2022 and waited eight more months. A Jenner & Block client alert noted that Google had reserved its arbitration rights in every substantive filing. The court held that Google had nonetheless acted inconsistently with those rights. The ruling was a Waiver of Arbitration finding made after the Supreme Court's decision in Morgan v. Sundance (2022), which removed any prejudice requirement from the federal waiver test. With arbitration waived as to the litigated class, the purchaser class went forward in court.

The mass opt-out

Waiver of arbitration against the class did not stop individual consumers from choosing arbitration themselves. During the 2024 opt-out period, Labaton Keller Sucharow LLP submitted a single exclusion request on behalf of 69,507 people who wanted to arbitrate individually. Google asked the court to reject it. Google argued that mass or representative exclusions violate each class member's due process right to make an informed, individual choice. It also argued that the request lacked the individual signatures the long-form notice required.

On February 14, 2025, Judge Freeman denied the motion. Reporting by Bloomberg Law and the National Law Review says she found that the claimants had made "individualized decisions" to retain counsel and authorize the exclusion. Strict compliance with opt-out formalities is not required, she reasoned, where there are "sufficiently clear indicia of an intent to opt out." The missing wet signatures were treated as a technicality. Commentators also noted that Google's arbitration terms expressly bar consolidation of individual arbitrations. That provision means each of the 69,507 claims must proceed on its own and carry its own Initiation Fee and case-management costs.

How the settlement treats arbitration claimants

The settlement handles that population in two ways, according to the long-form notice:

1. 2024 opt-outs stay out unless they rejoin. Anyone who validly excluded themselves from the certified purchaser class in 2024 is excluded from the settlement. The exception is someone who rejoined one or both settlement classes by filing a timely, valid claim form. A consumer in the mass opt-out group could therefore drop the arbitration route and take a settlement payment instead.
2. Arbitration claimants who settled individually are carved out. The classes exclude any person who, by August 27, 2026, both (A) filed or served a written Demand for Arbitration, or gave Google written notice of an intent to arbitrate the released claims, and (B) signed an individual release. The two-part test matters. Serving a demand alone did not take a person out of the class. Serving a demand and signing a release did.

The structure implies that Google has been resolving at least some arbitration claims individually and wanted those people fenced off from double recovery. Neither the order nor the public reporting discloses how many of the 69,507 arbitrations have been filed, resolved, or abandoned. Anyone in that group who neither rejoined nor signed a release keeps whatever individual claim they have.

Google Assistant settlement vs. Apple's Siri settlement

The closest comparison is Lopez v. Apple, No. 4:19-cv-04577-JSW, also in the Northern District of California. It arose from the same 2019 wave of reporting that contractors were listening to voice assistant recordings. Reuters noted in January that Apple had agreed in December 2024 to pay $95 million to settle its Siri case.

	Google Assistant	Apple Siri (Lopez v. Apple)
Fund	$68 million	$95 million
Court	N.D. Cal. (Judge Beth Labson Freeman)	N.D. Cal. (No. 4:19-cv-04577-JSW)
Payment structure	Points: 4 per device (max 3 devices); 1 per privacy claim	Up to $20 per Siri-enabled device, max 5 devices
Arbitration history	Waiver ruling; 69,507-person mass opt-out to arbitrate	No comparable mass arbitration opt-out reported
Admission of liability	None	None

Apple's fund is larger, but the Google deal adds the arbitration overlay. Google's per-device ceiling may also exceed Apple's if the claims rate is modest. Google's points system rewards device purchases most heavily. The privacy-only point reflects the uncertified status of those claims.

What it means for drafters, defendants, and claimants' counsel

For drafters of consumer terms. The Google Assistant record shows the cost of an Arbitration Clause that is not enforced early. A company that litigates for years before moving to compel risks a waiver finding that sends a certified class to trial. It still faces individual arbitrations from consumers who opt out. A clause that bars consolidation, with no Batching or Mass Arbitration Protocol, leaves the company paying full per-case fees on every opt-out claim.

For defendants negotiating class settlements. The two-part carve-out (demand plus individual release) is a useful template. It keeps individually settled arbitration claimants out of the fund without excluding consumers who only threatened to arbitrate. Adding a "rejoin by claim form" path for prior opt-outs gives arbitration claimants a reason to come back into the class. That can shrink the arbitration inventory without a separate deal.

For claimants' counsel running mass arbitrations. The February 2025 ruling remains a strong authority for law-firm-submitted mass exclusion lists, provided the firm can show individual retention and authorization. The settlement also creates a decision point for those clients. A low-value class payment through the claims process can be weighed against the time, cost, and uncertainty of individual arbitration. Counsel should document each client's informed choice.

For class counsel and objectors. A one-third fee survived the 25 percent benchmark, but service awards did not survive intact. Expect objectors in other Ninth Circuit privacy settlements to cite the service award cut and to press for detailed lodestar support.

Frequently asked questions

Did the Google Assistant settlement get final approval?

Yes. Judge Beth Labson Freeman of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California granted final approval on October 13, 2026, in In re Google Assistant Privacy Litigation, No. 5:19-cv-04286-BLF.

When will Google Assistant settlement payments be sent?

No date has been set. Payments follow the settlement's Effective Date, which comes after the 30-day appeal window closes (November 12, 2026 if judgment entered October 13) or any appeal is resolved. Late 2026 or early 2027 is plausible if no one appeals.

How much will I get from the Google Assistant settlement?

It depends on the total points claimed. Purchasers earn 4 points per device (up to 3 devices) and privacy claimants 1 point. Class counsel estimated $18 to $56 per device and $2 to $10 per privacy claim before the claims count was known.

How much did the lawyers get in the Google Assistant settlement?

About $22.6 million in fees, roughly one-third of the $68 million fund, plus $1 million in expenses. The four class representatives received $5,000 each instead of the $10,000 requested.

What happened to the 69,000 people who opted out to arbitrate against Google?

They are excluded from the settlement unless they rejoined by filing a valid claim by August 27, 2026. Separately, anyone who served an arbitration demand and signed an individual release by that date is carved out of both classes.

Can I still file a claim in the Google Assistant settlement?

No. The claim, opt-out, and objection deadline was August 27, 2026, and final approval did not reopen it.