If interviews are really made to maintain high-engineering standards and prevent bad hires, interviewing and rejecting the author of a software that 90% of your employees use everyday is quite perplexing indeed.

While I understand that interviews are sometimes necessary to evaluate a candidate, it seems completely out of touch for Google to pass on an applicant with such an impressive background.

Not only that, but heaven knows that it takes a lot of dedication and leadership to lead an open source project from ideation to wide-spread use. If I were a startup founder, I would kill to get someone like him on my team.