I applied online. The process took 3 weeks. I interviewed at Google
Interview
Applied online, was contacted shortly after by a recruiter. Had to technical interviews. Each was 45 min long phone call with a shared google doc. The questions were not hard. Usual programming questions dealing with arrays, strings, hashes, etc. I had a hard time understanding the problem the first interviewer gave me - and I was nervous - so I didn't do so well on that one. The second one went much better even though the difficulty of the two interviews was about the same.
I applied through an employee referral. The process took 4 weeks. I interviewed at Google (London, England) in Feb 2013
Interview
I was contacted by a recruiting contact from HR. From there I was passed off to another contact who scheduled two back to back, 45 minute coding interviews. The first interviewer was very pleasant. After initially asking a question on which I fumbled, we spent the remaining time working on one question. The question itself wasn't terribly difficult, but it was intentionally ambiguous, to make sure I asked the right questions. After clearing up details we discussed optimizations, etc. This is probably the part of the interview that was most enjoyable as it didn't really feel like I was getting grilled. It felt as if we were discussing a problem and different approaches we could take. The second interviewer had a bit of an accent and seemed a bit less engaged/helpful. Also, the questions he asked were significantly tougher. All in all the process went very smoothly.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
I was asked to write an algorithm to solve a crossword-like puzzle (I forget the name, but started with a 'B'). As opposed to simply vertical, horizontal, and diagonal placement of words, they were allowed to snake around the grid in any way. I immediately thought "recursion" since you have to check every adjacent grid space to make a possible word. Needless to say, I didn't completely finish coding, but I did have the thought process correct.
I applied online. The process took 1 day. I interviewed at Google (Dublin, Dublin) in Feb 2012
Interview
I uploaded my CV on google's carrer website for that specific position. More than one month after I was contacted by phone to send an email with my CV and answer to 4 questions (dealing with my personal value, as a professional as a possible google employee). A new phone call was scheduled. This phone call took 15 minutes more or less and it went as any other regular interview. After that I was told that I would be contacted in the following weeks. A month or so after I received an email saying that they liked my profile, although at the moment they don't need my competencies but that they would keep me in their recruitment database for the next 6 months.