Google is one of the few companies hiring H1B's for their true purpose. If you look at where most of these visas are going it's clear that a large majority are low quality jobs.

It's a disservice to the brilliant visa holders I know as well as US citizens. it's extremely hard for them to get a job at a good company because so many of the visas are getting soaked up by those abusing the system.

If there was a huge engineer shortage you would see companies step in to provide developer training problems. This is clearly not happening.