> The reality is much more banal that they still need warrants and tech companies hate playing police/evidence servant for the government

I will not elaborate how I know, but that is not even directionally correct. But these are not even secret things that can’t be known simply through the Snowden, Wikileaks, and Vault7 releases. So why are you telling yourself this? Are you still wet behind the ears or something?

There are people who know exactly how governments do not in fact need warrants and the tech companies don’t even really know they are servants to the government, let alone which one. That’s how things are done. The less surface area the better.

Why did Google can it's mass scale location tracking again?

It's the lie you have to tell yourself otherwise you'll have to reconcile with the fact that the US imperialism has been an enemy of democracy and to people around the world for quite some time.