The other option is the government would just force them to bypass their own trust model to give them meaningful access, such as what happened with Lavabit.
As for trust, there is no way you can trust cloud storage. You have to assume it's hostile, or that your data is crossing hostile territory to or from. The security model has to avoid trust, which is what I described: signed keys in a Web of trust, no CAs, and no closed-source clients.
Using web of trust signed keys is all well and good for techies. How would Google possibly set that up for average folks in a way that they themselves could not circumvent? I certainly could not see my parents working with key pairs unless the vast majority of the work was done automatically.
Notes implemented secure messaging (except for that key escrow thing) that was as easy to use as any email client. Skype implemented ephemeral keys for real time communication that was VERY simple to use.
There is no excuse, and it will take less time than a lawsuit to provide customers with NSA-proof products.