Pros

I believe that Google offers one of the best internships available to students. They not only issue students a great deal of responsibility, they also cater a great deal socially, organising many events (from mini-festivals, to international internship expos, to sea safari's in Dublin).

During the internship, I had many 1:1 meetings with my manager who offered good advice and feedback about the project I was given.

Great brand name on the CV.

Cons

For my first week, I was given the task of working in the "AdWords Approval Bin" - a place where all automatically disapproved ads are kept and individually screened by Google employees. Many interns were given this for a week or two. Some people apparently spent half their internship doing it. Its not challenging nor stimulating - its very repetitive.

Although they do give interns big projects, from my experience very few of the projects (especially if they are focused on AdWords) will be implemented. This is due to the fact that most changes to AdWords are typically incremental and only seem to tweak what has already proved itself to be a very succesful product.

Advice to Senior Management

From what I heard from other interns, most had secured their position through a referral. This makes it very difficult for anyone without a referral to get into Google, and is unfair.