So this is apparently less of a thing now, or at least it wasn't an issue for me. I negotiated an offer with Google last week, and I have a very good idea of which team I'm going to. I was given three options based on preferences and "matching my background to teams". Before accepting the offer, I was allowed to narrow this down to a single team.
I don't know if this is common now or only applies to people coming off of the industry track instead of the university track, but it was not at all what I'd been warned to expect.
So far everything about Google has been generally fantastic. I'm hoping it lives up to it once I'm inside.
