It seems to me that Google's perceived hiring issue is "we can't tell the candidates apart, because they all studied our interview questions they found online."

It seems to me that Google's perceived hiring issue is "we can't tell the candidates apart, because they all studied our interview questions they found online." (and not "our process is fundamentally broken to the core" like it probably should be). In that context, "give take-home tests" and "ask better questions" sound like the exact opposite of good answers. I think this is a problem that's unique to very large corporations. Not only do thousands of people interview there, meaning questions and answers are likely to be traded verbatim online, but there's also actually an incentive to cheat your way in: you can hide out for 1-2 years and acquire a horde of cash and resume fodder. Google have actually made this problem worse for themselves, too. By overvaluing their interview process, they've made cheating even more lucrative. Cheat your way into even an offer there and you have something valuable to put on your resume! I suspect you haven't seen a lot of cheaters on take-home tests before because at a company like Matasano, there's little incentive to cheat your way in. You certainly can't hide out in a corner doing no work there.