Well, my reasoning at the time (2007) was that since my areas of expertise were machine learning and parallel processing, then if they wanted to hire people who

Well, my reasoning at the time (2007) was that since my areas of expertise were machine learning and parallel processing, then if they wanted to hire people who knew low-level sorting and searching algorithms by heart, it wasn't the place for me. I was surprised how one dimensional their process was. And I believe it may have changed since then. My former colleague did apologise when I related my experience and admitted that Google knew they had a problem with the process.