Maybe the sort of person who has the time/desire/interest to study a guide to figure out how to fit in at google is exactly the sort of person they want to hire.

Yeah, I don’t think my whiteboarding skills are particularly useful at work, but the personality type that makes me obsessively practice whiteboarding for weeks before a job interview tour also makes me effective at work.

The bikeshedding engineer is exactly what Google or Amazon is looking for. Nothing wrong with that either, I just take issue with the entire industry standardizing around that type of engineer.

My impression was the opposite.

You're given a problem, there are usually a few clear-cut ways to solve it. You're expected to find an optimal or near optimal solution fairly quickly, and explain your approach clearly. That's it.

I've thought the more open-ended, unstructured interviews lead to more bikeshedding opportunities.

Sounds pretty accurate

Well, the (in house) recruiters recommend them. The engineering staff that does the interviewing generally don't get involved in this recommendations.

The recruiter gets paid if/when they push someone through to get hired, which is a very different incentive from what the hiring engineers have.

The real test is how badly you want the job.