I am sure the engineers at Google are all very intelligent. I never meant to imply otherwise.

Back in 2004 or so, Google had a virtual monopoly on all the top engineering and CS talent coming out of school. At that time, Apple wasn't as sexy as it is now, Facebook didn't exist, and everything else (Microsoft, Yahoo, etc) just seemed sort of lame and corporate. Every top computer scientist wanted to work at Google.

My point was that those days are long gone. Google lost a lot of good talent to Facebook and startups. It no longer has the luxury of cherry picking the best of the best. Getting a job offer from Google is no longer nearly as prestigious as it once was.