I applied through an employee referral. The process took 3 weeks. I interviewed at Google
Interview
I applied through a friend who is at Google. I heard back to setup a phone interview a week later. I set my phone interview for a week and a half after that. After my interview was over, I did not have a good feeling about the phone interview. I don't want to go into details, but let's just say I could tell the interviewer didn't seem interested in seeing me succeed. His first question was very ambiguous - nothing like I had read about here or heard about - and ended up being an estimation question. And he tended to ramble which didn't help me get to the point of the question. After every answer I gave, he pretty much implied I was wrong and made me use his assumptions to continue to answer the next part of the question. He didn't give me a chance to justify my responses (as I'm told they are supposed to do), and cut me off exactly at 45 minutes. I feel like it's luck of the draw with the initial interview. You have one chance to impress one person. While my experience wasn't necessarily positive, I don't fault the company as a whole and I'd encourage others to apply to this position.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
One estimation question that seemed to initially a market analysis question. i.e. Based on the way the question was asked, I thought it was "what would Google need to do to expand it's business in x?" But when I started answering that question, it turns out it was actually an "estimate the value of this particular service that Google offers" question.
Very self-driven, first of multiple rounds, where I had to take the initiative to arrive at the problem, constraints, approach, solutions, tradeoffs and reasoning behind it in a matter of 30 minutes.
You would have to do a hiring assessment first, then a recruiter screening follows. First round interview with the hiring manager. Majorly product sense and product improvement. The questions were not direct though.
Overall a lot of steps to the interview process. Talked to different people and had opportunities to ask questions. Many different stages which made it a lengthy process overall. Wasn't too bad.