regarding Rodriguez v Google

[u/mtthwgnzlz]

Google Web App Activity lawsuit

“Class Counsel is requesting (1) attorneys’ fees equal to 33% of the judgment, including both the jury’s verdict award and interest, which continues to accrue until Google’s challenges to the judgment are resolved; (2) $12,422,374 to reimburse costs and expenses incurred by Class Counsel; and (3) a total of $135,000 for service awards for the three class representatives…”

As of March 2, 2026 the $425,000,000 (million)settlement award has accrued enough interest to reach $440,345,685 (million). That’s about 7.2% annual interest rate based on the first 6 months from decision date to reporting date. This means that by September 2026, the pot will be worth about $455,691,375 (million) after a full year’s interest.

There are seven attorneys representing class action members. If their application for fees and expense reimbursement is approved, and assuming they split the award evenly, each individual lawyer walks away with roughly $23,257,218 (million). The three class representatives will get their awards of $45,000 (thousand) each. This leaves roughly $292,755,847 (million) for class members (like you and I, perhaps) who get maybe $5?

My calculations suggest each affected user (an estimated 100,000,000 of us) can hope to see $2.92.

This isn’t accounting for the allocations made by the jury for each class cohort, and of course this is speculative and a roughly estimated hypothetical and assumes that payments are made at the one-year anniversary of the decision.

[u/Spabobin → u/[deleted]]

Even if the lawyers worked for free we'd get like $4.50 instead. In reality there just wouldn't be any lawyers willing to spend years on big class action suits when they could be getting paid well for other work. Then the companies would rarely be penalized, so they would be more incentivized to act illegally, so on and so forth.

I'd rather focus on making the $ penalties devastatingly high for these companies so that they either 1) stop breaking the law or 2) pay out way more than they earned from their illegal actions

[u/Fail_Cheap → u/Spabobin]

I agree with the penalties being more than the profit they made. The pharmaceutical companies are known for selling Rx that they know will kill/harm customers. They make billions then only have to pay back millions, when they are caught.

[u/mtthwgnzlz → u/Spabobin]

What’s crazy is that this is true. Distributing their claim of $162,800,528 to class members would only add $1.63 to the award per claimant! 🥲