For a normal subpoena from a court, yes.
For an "administrative" subpoena from an agency, they take a risk in court.
Judicial review is deferred. If Google thinks the subpoena is egregious, they can go to court and argue. But in the meantime they can either carry it out or risk being held in contempt if they don't and lose in court.
According to this article, it is treated as a request and often denied by the company. The target of the warrant did go to court to quash it, but that was already after Google declined to share the information.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/2026/02/03/hom...
edit: it appears that either 1. the Washington Post is printing misinformation, or 2. I have made a grave misinterpretation.
I think that is a different case though.
Washington Post can be relied on to publish disinformation, not just misinformation:
https://bsky.app/profile/cingraham.bsky.social/post/3mecltnb...
Washington Post editorials have gotten pretty conservative, but that's different from articles in the news section.
(It seems similar to the difference between the Wall Street Journal's reporting and editorials.)
If their editorial content is for sale, is it not reasonable to assume the rest is for sale also?
The above example isn’t a “conservative” editorial, it is a partisan editorial. A legitimate organization would never publish such inconsistent writing.
I mean, it is BezPost.