spoken like a true Goo-guzzler

Yep. Code reviews work best when there is an agreed upon coding standard and maybe even some sort of Czar to weigh in with ultimate authority. There are some people who will waste everyone's time niggling pettily about spacing before and after the parens and such. Code reviews can also bog down indefinitely as different reviewers weigh in with a demand for a complete refactoring that differs fundamentally from another reviewer's outrageous time consuming refactoring request. You are then stuck in the position of trying to please two parties who are engaged in a philosophical power struggle and not being able to. I have seen code languish in limbo this way for weeks because no one had time to sort it out and no one would approve the code review. Nevertheless despite such occasional abuses, I still believe code reviews are essential.

I was doing well on a phone interview with Google until I casually revealed that CS was my second career (e.g. I'm "old"). The interviewer almost hung up on me right then, and scrambled to end the call quickly. If you happen to go to their campus, you'll be hard pressed to find any bald heads or silver hair anywhere. The vast majority of them are under 30, seriously.

there will no doubt be a good number of heads rolling down halls there within a day or so

it fills me with joy. I wonder if other birds will attack it.

Google is getting in everybody's space, which is ticking off most the industry. Google's products are not generally better, (often flakey or worse (consider google docs and gmail - so what? the only advantage they offer is that they are free (for now) ) ), they just have amazing brand name recognition. The buyers of these products are buying buzz, not quality. Google is becoming an octopus. Go out and try to set up a lemonade stand, Google will set up a competing stand down the street and give lemonade away for free! Just because they can. It doesn't mean they should. They have already destroyed the search market because only crazy people would start up a search company and go up against them. They are busily destroying most other markets too.