They are capable, they have even arguably done it a few times over the last 15 years. They don't want to. Google wants your messages to feed their ad serving,

They are capable, they have even arguably done it a few times over the last 15 years. They don't want to. Google wants your messages to feed their ad serving, which is their actual business. Messaging is just the crap they give away to feed their ad serving revenue machine. Technically Google Messages is E2E encrypted, provided you stay one the happy path, which is harder than it looks, since they don't allow anyone but themselves to play in the happy path.