Why is this irritating? Google won't hire you iff you solve the puzzle, this is nothing more than a very popular way for institutions to generate free PR.
If your Google searches are not linked with your Google account or if you search using different search engines, you're out of the game.
EDIT: Turns out you need a history of googling this stuff. My heavy Python phase in school was timed wrong it seems.
I'm not signed in to Google as a matter of course, and I block their ads, so I provide them very little value. As a result, I won't be able to use "foobar", whatever the hell it is.
Seems fair. Isn't really that irritating, is it? :-)
Has it occurred to any of you that we might do these things for sheer fun, because doing that is not only allowed but celebrated?