Applied with a referral and was contacted within 1-2 days.

Proceeded with a technical phone interview. I was asked about my current job and a coding question, which was not particularly hard (group strings based on given criteria). I found an optimal solution almost immediately and coded it quite fast, but stumbled in one place. Eventually, I got working code for the optimal solution.

The next day, the recruiter contacted me and asked to schedule a meeting to share results (the first available slot was in a week). On the meeting, the recruiter said Google won't proceed further this time and encouraged me to reapply, stay in touch, etc. (all the usual staff to end it on a positive note).

The only feedback I received is that the technical/algorithmic side was not strong enough to go further. This is quite strange, since the solution was optimal and provided within the interview time, but I didn't manage to get more details.

In general, a natural experience. On one hand, the organization of the interview was good; on the other, the feedback was irrelevant to the actual flow of the interview, and I had to wait for the results for more than a week (although they were available immediately after the interview).

Given an array of strings, group them in a specified (and a bit intricate) way.