[xevb3k]

And is there anything in that denial that has been shown to be technically incorrect?

My understanding is that there wasn’t involvement from google, that data was extracted without their knowledge from links between data centers.

[throwaway2048]

And what about Amazon and Apple's denial will be found technically incorrect in a few years.

EDIT: to the downvoters, its easy to play this game, Apple makes a large amount of very specific denials.

    Each time, we have conducted rigorous internal
    investigations based on their inquiries and each 
    time we have found absolutely no evidence to support 
    any of them.

    Apple has never found malicious chips, “hardware 
    manipulations” or vulnerabilities purposely planted 
    in any server. Apple never had any contact with the FBI
    or any other agency about such an incident. We are not
    aware of any investigation by the FBI, nor are our 
    contacts in law enforcement. 

What about investigations and law enforcement contacts via a third party (perhaps a specialized hardware security firm? )

    Our best guess is that they are confusing their story
    with a previously-reported 2016 incident in which we 
    discovered an infected driver on a single Super Micro 
    server in one of our labs.

You mean the story they explicitly denied with similar strength (and wiggle room to boot when the truth came out)

    Apple is deeply committed to protecting the privacy and
    security of our customers and the data we store. We are
    constantly monitoring for any attacks on our systems,
    working closely with vendors and regularly checking 
    equipment for malware. We’re not aware of any data being
    transmitted to an unauthorized party nor was any
    infected firmware found on the servers purchased from 
    this vendor.

https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2017/02/apple...