I applied through a recruiter. The process took 3 months. I interviewed at Google in Feb 2013
Interview
I was contacted by a Google recruiter based on my background in November 2012 about Product Management positions at Google. It was tough to give the 4 to 5 open slots for the next few weeks as i travel quite a bit on business. I finally send over some dates for Jan/Feb and set up a phone interview.
PM from google calls me on time and we talk about mobile space , innovation in this space, the next frontier etc. No wierd questions , just a good conversation.
I got a quick email back from recruiter about an hour after the interview to indicate i was not a good fit I would say that the recruiters at google are way better than the ones at Amazon.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
How would you figure out if a web site or online posting for a business is a spammer?
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.