I've personally found the Google hiring process disappointingly vague, and I felt a lot like the OP. Do you want me to build a solution or do you want me to tell you what the Big-O notation is for an algorithm? These two are not necessarily the same thing. The one-size-fits-all interview style doesn't work, particularly if you get a crappy draw on the interviewers.

The odd thing to me is that the Google hiring process optimizes for the theoretical, but everything I've seen seems to indicate that the practical is what moves you up the ladder at Google. And by practical, I really do mean it. Google (rightly, IMHO) values Getting Stuff Done and then optimize later for a number of job roles. And the people who I know who are very good at the theoretical can be quite poor at the practical, and it's detrimental to Google to hire those people into those roles.

The hiring process simply doesn't seem to link to the reality.

(I'm a Google intern, so I agree there's likely to be some skewed viewpoint)