Google is a massive company. By some reports 10% of 'internet traffic' flows over its private links. It has an army of smart engineers who know internet technology inside out and develop new systems at various layers on a regular basis.
Why do they need the NSA to help them against attacks, exactly?
Agreed. The NSA employs the most Math PHDs of any organization in the world, as well as a lot of CS PHDs. They also have a huge budget and some of the most powerful computer clusters in the world. Further, they almost certainly know more about China's cyber-warfare capabilities than anyone outside the Chinese government.
Let's not forget that this is also the NSA's area of expertise. Making awesome search engines and ad services are very different practices than conducting cyber warfare. Not only that, they have access all the most important players in a way that no company ever could.
I probably am underestimating their resources, but I'd still like an answer that'll allow me to vaguely quantify those resources and how they'll be put to use battling the evil fiends Google seems to be having trouble fending off.
And while we're on the subject, will other non-government companies faced with online attacks also have access to NSA resources? And if not, why not? Where's the line here and what are the implications?
The approximate budget for the intelligence community (the collection of sixteen agencies dealing with intelligence as part of the federal budget) is something in the neighborhood of $75 billion. Signals intelligence gets over 90% of that budget. The NSA is the largest of the signals intelligence agencies (the other ones being the National Reconnaissance Office and the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency).
So let's assume that the NSA gets the lion's share of nearly $70 billion, say $30-35 billion, as its annual operating budget. It also gets access to things money can't buy: classified technologies, crytographic techniques, secret knowledge of physical infrastructures, etc.
Google, on the other hand, has no (or extremely limited) access to state secrets (either those of the U.S. or of foreign countries), and it has an annual income of about $6.5 billion--one fifth that of the NSA.
The NSA doesn't utterly dwarf Google, but on the other hand they have some substantial advantages that Google simply cannot match.
It may significantly help others from being attacked--the NSA has the advantage of being able to connect the dots in a way that no single company can (no matter how large). They know how other attacks in the past have worked, who else is getting attacked, etc etc.
If this were merely about technical assistance, you wouldn't have a press release about it.
I read this as a warning to China that the US has taken a Defense Interest in Google (and implicit interest in the other companies affected in the recent attacks). And that further 'incidents' may trigger a National Response. There's simply no other reason to announce the partnership.
It may significantly help others from being attacked--the NSA has the advantage of being able to connect the dots in a way that no single company can (no matter how large). They know how other attacks in the past have worked, who else is getting attacked, etc etc.
Why do they need the NSA to help them against attacks, exactly?