Side note, what does "Google did not immediately respond to a request for comment." mean? That sounds like extremely poor journalism, has anybody ever immediately responded to anything?
Even a response of "let me get back to you" upon receiving a request is at least a response. That pretty much infers that you've caught your contact unawares and they need to get up to speed. So instead of looking out of touch, these contacts just let voicemails, emails, texts/chats go unanswered providing a bit of plausible deniability of sorts. Better to say nothing than the wrong thing.
Second, yes, media contacts can answer the phone and provide a prepared statement for certain news which makes it an instant response.
Writers for major outlets are sending emails the night before publishing a critical story in the morning, then responding slowly enough to the eventual reply that by the time they issue a confusing correction or addendum, they've already squeezed all of the juice out of the story they're going to get and everyone has moved on.
Often "immediately" means something different than the literal definition too. I.e. it's a super safe way to say "they may have actually responded sometime since we asked, but not in time to be included here."
It's not _great_ journalism but it is transparent.