The process took 3 days. I interviewed at Google in Jul 2008
Interview
First two in-person interviewers were engaged and highly animated about the work they do at Google. Both of these first two interviewers took me through the standard Google "write a search routine" and "describe how you would approach this sampling from a massive data set problem".
The third in-person interviewer was just strange. First, he clearly was distracted from the interview process and felt put out by having to interview someone. He went through the motions of the standard type of "write some code to solve this problem" question. But any time I asked a question to clarify some part of the problem statement he grunted and glanced around the room wildly before stating that it was obvious. Once the hour was up, the interviewer stood up abruptly and said "I have to go" and left the room.
With no instructions as a candidate I had to run after the interviewer to catch him outside the building to ask what happens next. To which he shrugged and said "Go home or go find HR." With no further information I decide that this wasn't a culture I was willing to work in.
The process took 1 day. I interviewed at Google (Mountain View, CA) in May 2008
Interview
Several successive one-to-one interviews. First was a general discussion, ending with questions about a particular point of a framework. Apparently really did not care about my previous experience or skills. Second one was more about infrastructure, basically how to build web search engines (inverted indexes, how to match several terms,etc). Third one was algorithms oriented, was is the best way to implement sort, Java Code, and variations on the best choice for pivot, ending in maths, arithmetic suites, etc. Last one was somewhat about web client data model.
Overall, tricky interviews, but a very strange and bad feeling about the interview process with the complete lack of discussions on real world previous experience.
Interview questions [2]
Question 1
What happens when you enter a search query on google ? ideas about sorting results ?
I applied online. The process took 4 weeks. I interviewed at Google in Aug 2010
Interview
Basically they did not review anything, no details on position or anything like that. They did not seem to care about my experience, just my knowledge of algorithms and data structures. Very confusing information provided from recruiter.