[Oletros]

> I think Pichai is making a distinction between handing over data they already own (eg. a Gmail account) and data stored on user-controlled devices, which must be hacked to access.

No, Pichai is making a distinction between giving the information after a correct process and developing a backdoor to slurp the data. It has nothing to do with cloud/device differences

[icebraining]

That's a distinction without a difference, since in practice they only need a backdoor to get data from the user's devices and not from their servers.