Right, I remember (as an outsider to google) the push for https coming after Firesheep [1] and the google research on the actual CPU cost of https [2], both in 2010. Snowden's revelations came in 2013.

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firesheep [2] https://www.imperialviolet.org/2010/06/25/overclocking-ssl.h...