I am not super techie, but my understanding was several expert subcontractors, outside of Google (Google subcontractors), were brought in to find, access images that were not saved by a subscription.
Each company had to do their own parts of the restoration( including protecting their own proprietary coding), so step by step process, probably even links between these separate subcontractors work needed permission. Time consuming work to begin with, permission needs to be granted along the way.
This is after they have found the appropriate timestamp section of the cloud to look, in the first place.
I think the FBI worked pretty quickly. This is just where we are in 2026 with proprietary coding. And as noted, obviously cloud can’t save everything forever.
Maybe a techie person can explain better? TIA
JMO