These bits of litigation are interesting, but my usual takeaway is a mild contempt for the whole thing.
Whether it's something minor like this or a major antitrust cases (eg, the recent adwords EU case), what is and isn't legally actionable seems arbitrary from a non-legal perspective. Even legislation efforts like european "cookie laws" and such seem bumbling and naive.
What's the legal fix to this, assuming google lose? An extra tick box? T&C update?
The reality of interacting with large software companies as a consumer doesn't lend well to brick and mortar analogies. A T&C section is not analogous to a rental contract. Even residential or employment contracts are usually subject to legal filters... cultural norms at least.
The "problem" here is one of structure. Google own android to (a)dominate the mobile phone market and (b) support the targeted ads business, the main business.
Whether or not google are "stealing" data allowance from customers, or acquiring this right voluntarily/contractually from customers is interesting in the abstract, I guess. In is so peripheral to the actual problem though.
I realize this case isn't supposed to be dealing with the wider problems of legal monopolies. The legal/legislative whole is. It seems that whatever the goal of the action (from litigation to legislation or regulation), they pick around the irrelevant edges.
What, legally, should google be legally allowed to do given that it's leveraging the fact that they control your phone, own a lot of your data, etc. If the answer is whatever the T&Cs say, the answer is "everything."