This is my guess. Recently Google began to aggressively recruit at my university over the last two years or so. The cynical question is, of course, "why only in the last two years?" when our particular CS program has been around since the 80s.

The recruiter claimed that it was because more people started to be hired out of my school. But that still isn't sufficient to discount this possibility.

Granted I'm living in a country that isn't the U.S., that could have played a role. But I'm not confident either way.