I applied through a recruiter. The process took 3 weeks. I interviewed at Google (Mountain View, CA) in Apr 2009
Interview
Send the resume to the online site and was email back in a week. Then had a screening interview with the recruiter who explained the process and learned about my background.
Two weeks later I received an invitation to a phone interview with an engineer. He tested my knowledge in three possible IT scenarios, asked question and had me expand on possible solutions.
Interview questions [3]
Question 1
If you want to distribute a large file (gigabytes) in a large (100+ machines) park how do you do it?
I applied online. The process took 1+ week. I interviewed at Google (Boulder, CO) in Apr 2008
Interview
Initial stages of the interview were fairly routine. Phone interview was a little bit technical, but reasonable.
In person interview ended up with me failing to properly code an algorithm on the board, and the interviewer basically ending the interview at that point. Memorize your algorithms before this one, because merely knowing the algorithms properties and being able to look it up won't be good enough for this guy.
Startup got bought out by google and ended up with a bit of an attitude. Google thinks they walk on water.
Interview questions [2]
Question 1
What sort would you use if you had a large data set on disk and a small amount of ram to work with?