I think Google still attracts "algorithms & textbooks" sorts of software engineers. I don't see how it would be as attractive to the kinds of engineers that want to create products and businesses, and have a lot of power and control and freedom over what they're doing. I keep hearing about how one of the attractions of working for Google is knowing that your code will be used by millions of people, and run on thousands of servers, etc. You know what? I could give a shit. In reality, you will most likely only be writing a very small portion of the system the endusers will interact with. I'd rather write the entire system. And would you care inherently about how many machines it will run on? Personally I care more about creating lots of cool products that real people use, that make me money (ideally, a ton of money), and honestly, I don't really care whether it's running on millions of servers or merely a single or a dozen machines. Whatever. I also don't necessarily care about working with other "smart" people, at least as Google defines them. I do care a heck of a lot more about making new stuff, and learning new stuff, and getting to apply it, especially closer to the bigger picture end of the spectrum, and the product or business level of abstraction.

As a user of Google's services, I love 'em.

As a potential employee -- totally not interested and hard to see the attraction.