I participated in Google's interview once. After 2 phone screenings with algorithmic questions I was invited to a full day on-site interview involving meetings with 5 people, all of which asked me to solve algorithmic problems. In the end I was told that I did OK at the first 3 meetings, but not so well on my last 2 (actually I was able to answer all the problems given to me, but my performance dropped at some point due to getting tired and the last 2 people probably had other questions they wanted to ask, but couldn't due to lack of time).

Personally I recognize the importance of algorithms, data-structures and reasoning about asymptotic complexity. It's stuff that some are learning since high-school and should be common knowledge for all of us.

But what about other things of importance, like actually being able to build and deliver functional software? What about things like the quality of the code you write, or being experienced in building scalable systems, or being capable of working in a team, or having personal projects? I was never asked (maybe it was just my chance to end up being interviewed only by people that cared about algorithms).

Of course, it can be said that these practices worked well until now for Google. After all, there are plenty of really capable people working there. But maybe that happened in spite of the interview process, not because of it (e.g. one reason could simply be that resumes with internal recommendations have priority and people at Google are good at networking and recommending other good people).