I applied through an employee referral. The process took 2 days. I interviewed at Google (New York, NY) in May 2008
Interview
I was able to skip phone interview due to friend recommendation but typically you will be screened by phone. Your on site interview will be a full day and you will be quizzed by 4-5 developers. You will be asked technical questions and be asked to write some programs on a white board. These will tend to be computer science type problems: Convex Hull, String manipulation, List manipulation, and so on.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Develop a solution to convex hull and state its complexity.
The process took 2 weeks. I interviewed at Google (Mountain View, CA) in Dec 2009
Interview
One screening phone interview with recruiter, on-site interview thereafter with 6 engineers at Googleplex. All the engineers looked very smart but the interview questions were somewhat consistent (Big O notation and hash table) and not practical in real scenarios. They definitely look for particular engineers and they basically have no interest in your past experience. Not recommended for career development.
The process took 2 days. I interviewed at Google in Sep 2009
Interview
While working at Google may (or may not) be great fun, the interview process there is much less so. After a very technical phone interview, my in person interview was all about tricky logic problems with no focus on the engineering process itself (optimal card shuffling, How many golf balls can fit in a school bus?,etc.)