I applied through a recruiter. I interviewed at Google (Mountain View, CA)
Interview
Starts with a recruiter contacting you, followed by a pair of phone interviews that act as a pre-screen to see if it's worth bringing you in. After the first one, if it went well enough, you go on to a second phone interview.
If all went well so far, they bring you on campus for 5 consecutive interviews, each 45 minutes with a 45 minute lunch. The lunch "meeting" is a fun time getting to know potential peers and their experiences. You get to learn and corroborate what you hear about Google. It is a great place to work and why it's in high demand.
I didn't get a job offer, but was told the next step would've been to move it to a hiring committee, who acts as an unbiased neutral third party to ensure the recommendation is unbiased. They record all your answers and type a lot while you're talking and apologize in advance for doing so and inform you that it's part of the process to capture as much information to present to the hiring committee.
Presumably, had I made it that far the next step would've been a job offer. The whole thing from start (the onsite interviews) to finish (a job offer is extended) would've taken a minimum of three weeks.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Lots of questions that have an undertone of some of the things that make Google what it is, for instance, how would you build up the infrastructure for a search engine-where do you deploy servers and why? How would you identify keywords in search results? Etc. Try to understand how you'd do what Google already does is my advice and how'd you'd implement your own search engine. Although it's not a software engineer position, they expect you to know how to code. Make sure you know your syntax (whatever syntax you feel comfortable with). Brush up on algorithms, but no need to get fancy with your answer, just need something that works and is practical. Just remember, they will test you technically on software, which I found interesting considering the group I applied to it would've been more relevant to be tested on hardware knowledge, which I had zero questions about.
If you've been a project manager before, a lot of the questions are pretty easy if you can relate the answers to real life scenarios. Didn't think it was particularly hard, though no job offer was extended.
I applied through an employee referral. The process took 2 weeks. I interviewed at Google (Mountain View, CA) in Nov 2013
Interview
I was referred by a friend for the project manager position. The HR contacted me and then arranged for the phone interview. The hiring manager called me and asked me to write down the answers on the google doc. After the phone interview, and I was given the onsite.
For the onsite interview, I met with 5 people, and lunch with the hiring manager. 3 out of 5 people interviewed me are from different groups, not from youtube. The hiring manager has no power on the hiring, but does seem to be a very nice person to talk to. First interview is with a program manager who asked about a lot of PM process questions. The 2nd person is a senior PM who asked about analytic questions. The 3rd person is a software engineer who ask technical questions and the 4th person is a manager working at the data center who ask more about daily operation questions.
My overall impression about interview at google is: people are very smart, and they are very proud of being the best, and in some way you might call it arrogant. If you want to be part of those smart geeks, I guess you have to act the same way as well, since this is the culture. To get an offer from google, you are not only have to be well prepared, and ready for any strange analytic questions they are going to throw at you, and also treat it like a lottery: if you met nice people, your chances are much higher, and when you met with people who are just want to show off their IQs, or simply just want to learn some new ideas on what they are doing, then you either have to prove you are much better than they think you are, or you just accept the fact that today is not your lucky day.
Interview questions [3]
Question 1
Why do you see both sun and the moon on the sky sometimes, and the moon is never full? That is a irrelevant question, imo.
I applied through a recruiter. The process took 4 weeks. I interviewed at Google (London, England) in Sep 2010
Interview
4 stages, multiple face to face interviews, a written test on algorithms and data structures, a presentation to give. Called back to Google London office 4 times.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Asked in depth questions about a technical area I identified as lacking experience and knowledge in right at the beginning of the process.