I applied through a recruiter. I interviewed at Google
Interview
Very slow / complicated process. Well organized though but takes weeks if not months. You will get 5 phone interviews + calls with the HR following you between every calls. Then you go onsite for a day of interviews, mainly management skills, technical skills interviews. Interesting anyway, very good experience. After a week you get the results, if the HR is kind enough he will let you know why you've not been chosen for the role.
I applied online. The process took 1 day. I interviewed at Google (Sydney) in Aug 2020
Interview
Phone interview with the HR department in Google Japan first it was just a experience question and then technical questions at the end. In 1 week the 2nd interview would be done.
I applied through an employee referral. I interviewed at Google (Sydney) in Jul 2017
Interview
Was very well organized and very thorough. The interview process is rather grueling and definitely requires preparation. Choosing which language you are going to test with is rather critical as they want to ensure that you have a solid understanding of it
I applied online. The process took 3 weeks. I interviewed at Google (Mountain View, CA) in Dec 2016
Interview
Amazing recruiters. Very friendly call with an initial recuiter who asked me to rate my abilities and then gave a "pop quiz" at the end. I got a few wrong but it was enough to get a phone interview.
The phone interview was 45 minutes and was half programming/scripting and then 4 or 5 linux questions. I did okay, I didn't think I did excellent. I thought google would expect "excellent" and the process would end there. But to my surprise 2 days later they said they'd like to fly me out to Mountainview to interview.
All accommodations were taken care of quickly and efficiently - flight, car, food, amazing hotel.
There were 5 onsite interviews. 2 management interviews, 1 troubleshooting/linux/networking, 1 NALSD (non-abstract large scale system design) and 1 programming/scripting. Everyone was extremely friendly and nice. They all seemed like wonderful conversations. There were no "gotcha" questions. Because I was applying as an SE ("System Engineer") not SWE ("Software Engineer") there were no algorithms, sorting, graphs/trees, etc. The programming/scripting was practical, real world coding.
It took 2 weeks to get everything finalized and to receive an offer letter.
I can't stress enough how great the recruiters were - I felt like they were my advocates
