I work at Google and no it's not easy for us either. I've heard many of my coworkers joke that if they went through the interview process again they'd probably fail.
That said I see two kinds of interviewers. One kind (the good kind) takes a medium difficulty question and uses it to explore the candidate's coding, algorithms, communication, and problem solving skills.
The other kind has a super hard question with a single algorithmic solution that tells you nothing about what kind of engineer the person would be. This kind of interviewer takes too much pleasure in being a gatekeeper to Google.
That said I see two kinds of interviewers. One kind (the good kind) takes a medium difficulty question and uses it to explore the candidate's coding, algorithms, communication, and problem solving skills.
The other kind has a super hard question with a single algorithmic solution that tells you nothing about what kind of engineer the person would be. This kind of interviewer takes too much pleasure in being a gatekeeper to Google.