To clarify: the approach currently employed by the NSA is funding and otherwise supporting and coordinating subverted or subvertable technological companies. The companies will then deliver a product with superior fitness for whever purpose it pertains to serve. People will use the product for those features, forgetting or not knowing it also obliberates their privacy and leaks all information to the TLA's. The American government thusly provides a platform for the enhancement of technology, the economy and the national security. Overall, pretty damn good deal.

It's unlikely that Google rules the NSA or vise versa. Most likely the collossus goes where the collossus goes, and the NSA steals through it's massive infrastructure like lice in it's pelt. Unlike lice, the NSA is entirely symbiotic with Google. They excert force, mutually, for control, but so long as people use Google, Google will collect and the NSA will see. The same applies to every other tech startup out there.

Note that "compliance" can be subtle. It can be a National Security Letter to key individuals, a janitor or a CEO, or it can be an undetectable exploit in a router. It can be an undercover agent that came upon good knowledge of how to achieve a key position. Most likely a wealth of methods is used simultaniously, none admitted and without mutual knowledge of activities. If not, dear NSA, please take this as a humble recommendation.

So, does it surprise me that through incompetence, complience, negligence, malintend or all of the above, this happened? Nah. Tell me once USGOV starts jailing people for these slights. Being too obvious about it should be punished, don't you think?