I applied through college or university. The process took 2 months. I interviewed at Google (Londres, Inglaterra) in Feb 2013
Interview
After an interview workshop run by Google at my university I was contacted a few weeks later by a Google Recruiter. I initially had a 45 minutes phone interview with an engineer answering questions and writing code on a shared Google Doc. After that I was invited for on-site interviews. In total there were 5 interviews of 45 minutes each on that day. 4 of the interviews were mainly about problem solving and coding. The other one was more about system design (no coding, it was just a discussion). All interviews were with engineers. After the on-site interviews they asked for references from supervisors/managers etc.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
I found the system design interview hardest. It's difficult to prepare for and hard to estimate how well you're doing. The only advice I can give is to stay relaxed and talk about the ideas that come to your mind. The interviewer was quite helpful and it was more like brainstorming.
I applied through an employee referral. The process took 4 weeks. I interviewed at Google (Mountain View, CA)
Interview
A friend referred me, which began the interview process -- initial casual conversation, technical phone interview, then on-site interviews. There were 2 recruiters for the duration of the process with the switch-off happening between the technical phone interview and on-site interviews. I really enjoyed the fact that I had these friendly recruiters as my point of contact because it made the interview process as smooth as possible and kept anxiety to a minimum. The on-site interviewers (other software engineers) were friendly for the most part, and I left with a good impression of Google.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
I didn't expect there to be a question about databases though it was listed as one of the potential topics I would be interviewed on. It was naive of me to think that they'd tailor questions to only what I might've learned (I had minimal computer science education with most of my experience from work).