I was contacted by a recruiter after being suggested to the recruiter by a faculty member at my university. The interview process was relatively standard and fairly smooth. The first recruiter started with a phone call to describe the process (phone interview, onsite, job offer) and answer any questions. After that, we set up a time for a technical phone interview.
The phone interview is a technical evaluation using a Google Document for coding. Prior to the interview, the recruiter gave me a ton of information and topics to study (which you can easily find with a Google search). I cannot share the specific questions they asked, but they were interesting CS problems related to algorithms and data structures (surprise surprise right?).
After my phone interview, I was asked to have another phone interview and my recruiter handed me off to another recruiter (who got candidates for a specific team at Google). I suppose the second interview could be standard for some teams or I was marginally acceptable in the first interview. I do not know. The second interview was the same as the first, except a different engineer and different questions.
After passing the phone screening stage, I was invited for an onsite interview in Mountain View. This was a definitely a great experience. There were 4 distinct interviews (along with tours, lunch, and the usual stuff). Each interviewer asked similar questions to those in the phone screenings (in difficulty). Once again, I cannot share the specific questions but the list of topics is freely available.
Once the interviews are done, the hiring decision is made by a committee.
Overall, the recruiters were very quick and efficient and always pleasant.