Google Software Engineer interview questions

I was contacted from a recruiter solely based on my performance on a well known algorithm competition. I got a quick assessment phone call and after that came the algoritm phone call test. The question I got was rather tricky and really couldn't see a better approach than the brute force solution. I got notified a week later that I wasn't approved for onsite interview.

After submitting my resume, an internal recruiter contacted me and explained the interview process: 5-6 interviewers with individual grade forwarded to a hiring committee in California. I was given links to some interview questions, suggestions to read some books (e.g., "Cracking the Code Interview"), and suggestions to attend a free on-site interview workshop. On subsequent follow ups, the recruiter then offered me a choice of interview dates with suggestions as to when was preferable to get the "best" interviewers. On the day of the interview, I signed into the building and met the recruiter who escorted me to a meeting room with a round table, and a white board. Google has an eclectic office space that is the subject of several published articles. The NY Chelsea office has 7+ floors with themed areas (lego, computers, etc) of open cubicles intermixed with meeting rooms, cafeterias and snack centers, and social/gaming areas. I was offered coffee then chatted with the interviewer. On the board was a the interviewer's phone number, list of 6 interviewer names, extensions, and scheduled time. The interviews were 45 minutes each. 3 interviews in the morning, a break for lunch with a non-interviewer for Q&A, then 3 in the afternoon. The interview process was pleasantly and efficiently conducted. The interviewers were personable. Most were young-ish, with a high degree of self-confidence, and had worked between 2-10 years at Google. Two emphasized their satisfaction of working everyday with smart people. Interviewer experiences discussed were data crunching, parsing, optical recognition, hardware and redundancy, and data synchronization.