From an interesting blog post about the level of depth during a Google technical interview:
They also sent me an email with advice. It can be summed up as “You should know everything. If it’s to do with computers, you should know it. Here are 5 books and 4 fancy algorithms you should read. You must also be intimately familiar with all these basic-ish algorithms. This is your two week notice. Good luck. Oh and take a look at these videos too!”
I have a few friends who work at Google, and they are all top-notch engineers and thinkers, so it’s not a coincidence. Any good organization has a technical screening process that covers more than just the basics, and it looks like Google is no exception. In fact, the above note makes it seem like they go out of their way to ensure the candidate comes prepared to show their best, something that not all companies do. In this case, the important thing to note is that Google is more interested in smart software engineers than simply web developers.
Edit: For whatever reason, the linked blog is down. However, the cached version of the blog can be found here (cached by Google… so meta).
I think it makes sense that Google wouldn’t be looking just for “web developers”. Most of the problems they’re dealing with (systems handling large volumes of data quickly) are very traditional computer science problems that just happen to be situated behind a web frontend.
I completely agree with you, and I’m always surprised to hear people complain about the level of difficulty in a technical interview. A good interviewer will screen candidates according to the skills desired. Also, just because someone has not used a particular concept since university doesn’t mean it is not important to know.