Google Graduate Software Engineer Interview Questions & Reviews

Interviewed Oct 2011 in Munich (Germany) (took 4+ weeks)

First of all, I want to say that, beside I didn't get an offer, I liked the experience of interviewing with Google.
The people that spoke to me on the phone were nice and helpful to the extent they could be and I could hear they tried to make me feel as confortable as possible.
Now, to the interview process itself.
I applied online to various Graduate Positions as Software Engineer and a recruiter from Munich contacted me. I then had a phone screening with her during which she would just test if I knew anything about programming and that of course went well.
Then, scheduled for a couple of weeks later, the first phone interview. I spoke with an engineer in Zurich and he asked me some Java theories questions; after I answered most of them correctly, he asked me to code a problem for him: he shared a google doc and told me to solve a problem.
The problem was pretty straightforward, but we had some problem communicating the details that he wanted, so I ended up taking a lot of time (compared to the difficulty of the problem itself).
However, one week later they told me I passed and I would be moved to a second phone interview.
This I spoke with an engineer from Dublin, and after the standard Java and networking theory questions, he asked me to solve a problem in Java, which I did, and then asked me to solve another problem.
It was a string manipulation problem: Given a string, how to find the minimum window containing a given set of characters.
I tried to tackle it, but I never saw that problem before and, being really nervous, I literally coulnd't come up with any better solution than the naive O(n^2)....I knew there was a O(n) but I just couldn't think of it....so I ended up not doing anything. Classic mistake.
However the interviewer tried to help me where he could, to make me relax....all things considered, he was very nice!
However, not surprisingly, after a week or so I have been told I didn't pass the interview.