It's hard to glean from the information given whether the Googler was so intent in the red book (Skiena, Algorithm Design Manual) that he required interviewees

It's hard to glean from the information given whether the Googler was so intent in the red book (Skiena, Algorithm Design Manual) that he required interviewees to be able to quote verbatim or just expected a certain knowledge of algorithms (for which a number of books would suffice, but Skiena really is a great resource for).