That would be a lot stronger a statement, but at the end of the day... we'll never know. Anything he says could have been written with a govt. agent holding a gun to his head. I know, I know, total conspiracy theory territory. And I'm not saying that is the case, just pointing out that - at the end of the day - there's very little we can actually know for sure about their involvement or lack thereof.

Therefore, IMO, the best thing to do is assume that every single bit that hits a Google server, and every bit stored by Google, is available to the NSA, FBI, CIA, DIA, MI6, Mossad, etc., etc... which means using strong crypto to protect your stuff if you really care about keeping it private.