I have the personal experience!
I'm a new hire, and I got assigned to somewhere that doesn't align with my interests, at all... other than the fact that it's "not front end."
Hoping switching is as easy as everyone says!
Former Googler here: After an epic blind allocation fail, my attempt to switch to a project that made use of my talents enraged my manager and he reported me to HR. I left for greener pastures shortly thereafter and HR has apparently banned me from ever returning now that there is relevant work for me.
Obviously I have no knowledge of the specifics of your situation, but when I worked at Google I freely moved projects many times without a problem, my first time about 3 months after I arrived. I haven't worked there for a while, but I have many friends there and they change projects with some regularity.
Oi. Hope I grow to love my assignment, or can at least switch "cleanly."
If you're a new college grad or just new to the industry, Google rocks. But, if you have "a very particular set of skills. Skills I^Hyou have acquired over a very long career" then Google will most likely arbitrarily assign you* to whatever arbitrary team needs seatwarmers at the moment. And FWIW, my skills were considered irrelevant to Google the year I joined, but suddenly very relevant barely a year after I left.
*Unless you're an acqui-hire, and then Google once again rocks because you get both the perks and the interesting work.
Please drop me an email internally. My username is the same as here. This conversation cannot be meaningfully had in a public forum.
It doesn't match my experience. In almost seven years at Google I've worked on amazingly interesting projects - from hardware to user-facing products.
I've never once, in my entire time, had any level of management tell me that I should be worrying about selling ads or monetizing my projects. The consistent message has been "build great products".
So the notion that 99% (or really any majority) of developers at Google "drive the ad hive" is completely untrue - at least in my experience.