I was contacted through linkedin by a recruiter and after giving them a few references from friends who work at google, i was able to bypass phone screen. My friends said they received a form that they filled out. But even than, I was passed around to at least 4 different recruiters by the time I was actually onsite. I was interviewed by 6 people, plus the lunch person that had no say on the process. 3 of the interviewers asked me to code on a white board, and 3 did not. I thought that was odd, I had expected all of them to ask me to code. I made a mistake of making google my first interview in 7 years so I made silly errors. Overall it wasn't as dreadful as others described it.