[Pyxl101]

The Snowden disclosures did not suggest that Internet companies like Google were coordinating with NSA. The disclosures suggested that NSA was wiretapping all traffic across the Internet, and then parsing it, storing it, and indexing it so as to be able to make sense of what traffic represented e.g. a Google web search, and then search that semantically later.

Because at the time Google did not use encryption in their network links between data centers, NSA was able to siphon up a whole lot of information that way - maybe more than just interaction between users and Google services, potentially as much as interaction between internal components of Google.

Anyway, Google and other companies responded by employing encryption in these links, and promoting the use of encryption across a number of other protocols. The Snowden disclosures were in my perspective a catalyst for Google's promotion of HTTPS in the Chrome browser, and TLS in Gmail, and probably Certificate Transparency. The fact that these initiatives such as encryption between data centers started after the disclosures suggests that they were a response from Google to thwart this kind of surveillance.

[a_imho]

Google was requested large amounts of data by the NSA since ~2007 [1]. They were might or might not ordered to keep silent about it. They only started to address it as a reaction to the Snowden revelations. Additionally, there are letters such as linked above that show they are in fact very friendly with the NSA. One can argue they were caught red handed with little to nothing like an email here and there, but circumstantial evidence shows otherwise.

Personally I would go further, those multi billion dollar companies should have found a way to speak up if a contractor was able to, not just after the fact.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PRISM_%28surveillance_program%...