You're mostly right. Also, big companies want to * Minimize the time spent by their engineers interviewing candidates, * Standardize the process as much as po

You're mostly right. Also, big companies want to * Minimize the time spent by their engineers interviewing candidates, * Standardize the process as much as possible, so that anyone can run the interview. I'm convinced there are many reasons for smaller shops not to blindly follow Google's practices. But as a candidate, what can you do... it's their loss, I guess.