Google's News app for Android is chewing up gigabytes of user data

Chris Merriman
@ChrisTheDJ
23 October 2018

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GOOGLE HAS been asked to explain why its new Google News app for Android is sucking the life out of some users' data, guzzling up gigabytes at a time in some cases.

The issue, first reported back in September, has already been acknowledged by Google with a promise of a fix, but multiple users are complaining that they have accrued huge data bills as the app continues to chunter away to servers in the background.

One reader showed The Verge that they had used up 12GB of data in a night when their WiFi wasn't connected and so was left with a fee of $75. Some report double that figure over a month with bills of up to $385.

What's particularly worrying is that the app can be set to work on WiFi only, and the problem is still affecting people who have set this to ‘on'.

Google is yet to officially comment on the matter after initially saying: "The Google News team is aware of the issue and is looking into it." back in mid-September.

One poster to the Google Help Forums pointed out that they had first registered this point as far back as June without acknowledgement.

A UK user adds: "I've had the same problem last week here in the UK and have reported this to O2 as they have billed me £194 for excess data usage. I have just added my own message and then spotted this thread. Google you need to contact all service providers and sort out this appalling error and refund all those affected."

They went on to say he has reported the issue to the BBC, one of a growing number of Google users who are taking the matter to the media. Plus, of course, the inevitable three-word mantra of the annoyed techie - "class action lawsuit". μ