I've been reached out to by Google recruiters a few times over the past couple years (Facebook too, but I've heard there process isn't quite as time-consuming).

I've been reached out to by Google recruiters a few times over the past couple years (Facebook too, but I've heard there process isn't quite as time-consuming). I have never applied or interned there. I did get a Google Foobar invite and solved some of those problems but didn't choose to submit to Google. I went to an average mid-size school in the midwest, probably relatively unknown to them. I did some grad school which they seemed to notice; maybe they reach out to everyone who did CS grad school. One thing I have noticed more than any other place is that the early stage / non-tech recruiters really spent time digging into my LinkedIn or Stack Overflow CV to ask specific questions, even in non-technical aspects like being an RA in college or study abroad. I wish everyone did this. It made me take them more serious as being interested in me and not just people. I would really enjoy the opportunity to work for Google. I'm self-employed as an independent contractor with plenty of work. Most recently I turned the Google recruiter down after he sent a prep deck as I realized between prep, interviews, travel, etc, I'd be committing 100+ hours to the process. That's a lot of time and lost money, so despite having the desire to work there, at the end of the day I concluded it'd be a better use of time to opt-out than partially commit to an intensive process with very indefinite time bounds. The recruiter seemed surprised though — maybe people don't do this so much.