And, in the face of not knowing, why default to an explanation other than what has been given to us?
There is a difference between extreme skepticism in the face of one story, and postulating hypothetical scenarios that have equal or higher burdens or proof, and are less likely or more difficult to demonstrate.
In fact, in terms of logic, the two are diametrically opposed.
I'm sure they want to win these cases, but they wouldn't do this in complete secret, would they? They want the public to know about it, hoping this way it gets them to gain a tiny bit of trust back.
This goes beyond simple diffusion of responsibility, leaders at Google and Microsoft were complicit in the crimes the NSA committed and did nothing to stop them.
IBM was able to eventually live down its involvement in the holocaust. In today's world there is no excuse for a modern tech company led by wealthy, enlightened people to commit these kinds of wrongs. Ironically, it's as if Google's mantra became "Be Evil".
Such doings (empowering the NSA, IRS, etc. to snoop on innocent people for the express purpose of entrapping them or contriving other evidence) are pretty much the definition of exactly the kind of insidious evil that one would hope to be able to trust its service providers not to engage in.
My prediction is that within a few months as viable open source alternatives for Google and Microsoft services become available, we'll see lots of people leaving their cloud platforms/services.
Then there's the news report that corroborates this, implying not even the leaders of the companies had any idea.
I mean, again, they could all be lying...but Occam's Razor and all that.
gut feeling based on existing evidence and experience.