Initial contact with the recruiter was via email. I had been contacted in the past and finally replied to a follow-up.

I was able to skip the phone screen due to my experience level and internal Google references.

I had five on-site, hour-long interviews and a lunch interview/chat.

The recruiter was good at follow-up and kept me up to date on the status of everything.

I highly recommend their "practice" sessions, which are offered periodically to those scheduled for on-site interviews.

Most difficult: a question involving deep knowledge of map-reduce infrastructure. My background clearly showed that I did not have experience in that area.