I applied through an employee referral. The process took 1 week. I interviewed at Google (Hyderabad) in May 2012
Interview
After the initial resume screening, there was a phone screening. After which I got a call for a face to face at the Google office. The interview was nothing about technical skills but trying to guage out of box thinking, perseverence and problem solving. It started off with talking about my skills and experience then why Google and then it went to scenarios. The scenarios were related to the product I was supposed to be working on as well as some about common Google products. At no point you are made even slightly nervous or given a hint if you are not doing well.
I applied through an employee referral. The process took 5 months. I interviewed at Google (Mountain View, CA) in Jun 2011
Interview
The process is very, very slow. A friend sent my resume in back in January. I talked to three different recruiters during the period from February to May. They had trouble figuring out what groups might be a fit, and, frankly, the first one clearly never did understand what I do. The final group interview request came from a group that I never would have applied to directly (and after I had taken another job). I went simply out of curiosity to see the rest of the Google process. As it turned out, one of the interviewers is someone whose work I've admired a long time, which turned things around. Once I was in the process at the in-person Interview stage, there was a huge improvement in the interaction. I've rated this "negative overall", but it would really be: 4 months negative and 1 month positive.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Most of the time was spent on questions asking you to consider a hypothetical problem and design a system to meet it.