I wouldn't be surprised if the interview process for experienced engineers is unrefined. At this point in Google's lifecycle most of the qualified, experienced engineers who would want to work at Google already do. There are orders of magnitude more new-grad engineers to interview and so it makes sense that they would lack the practice and refinement on those candidates, even if those are the most valuable candidates to hire. The recruiter might have just been confused and gave him the standard list for any "technical" job that they have to use for new-grads and so cannot ask things with nuance.

When I was an interviewer at Google it felt like 90%+ of interviews were with candidates who had less than four years of experience. Probably half were fresh out of college. After the fifth candidate in a row who can't do simple recursion or algorithmic analysis (and I mean simple) you get pretty discouraged. In one phone interview I got to interview an experienced engineer with over twenty years of experience in C. He completed the question I usually have to spend 45 minutes on with a new-grad in <10 minutes. It was probably my favorite interview of all time because I actually got to discuss the subtleties and he reaffirmed that I could maintain high standards.