Google Foo bar: How searching the web earned a software graduate a job at Google

Specific searches related to software and coding development make Google ask the user if he’s “ready for challenge” in a system that recently provided one of the college graduates a job at the company.

A couple of months ago Max Rosett who was a computer science graduate found out that he was not ready to apply for a job at Google as well as he didn’t find enough confidence to apply for a full-time software position. But one day having entered “python lambda function list comprehension” in the search bar, he automatically took part in special Google hiring process.

The secret tool’s name is foo.bar. It represents a special system that Google uses for 1 year already, and it is triggered each time when the user enters search terms related to coding languages like Java or Python. The page with search results opens and reveals the message: “You’re speaking our language. Ready for a challenge?” As a user, you can choose “decline once”, “request the message isn’t shown again” or choose “I want to play”.

After that Rosett and anyone else who succeeded in entering the right search term was provided a series of programming challenges to solve. There are given 48 hours to solve the first problem. The task usually requires a little knowledge of algorithms and provides with options to use Python or Java. In his turn, Rosett completed the task in a couple of hours. He said that each time he submitted a solution, foo.bar tested his code against 5 hidden test cases.

Over the next 2 weeks, Rosett succeeded in solving 5 more problems and after the sixth one he was provided a final puzzle after which he was asked to provide his contact details. That was funny, as Rosett thought that was the end of the story. But anyway he typed in his phone number and address. In a couple of days, Rosett got an email from the recruiter, who asked for the CV. Then a traditional Google’s recruitment process took place. It included a full day of problem-solving on a whiteboard at the company’s California headquarters.

What is foo.bar?

Found out by Hacker News user last year, the wonderful page had to be an obscure promotion of the Imitation Game. That’s a movie starring Benedict Cumberbatch, a World War 2 codebreaker Alan Turing. The mysterious address 146.148.62.2014 shows a page that looks the same as google.com.foobar, Rosett encountered and said that the code had been cracked with the last word linking to the Imitation Game’s website.

But google.com/foobar is still alive, although only for those users who have previously visited it and logged in before. All new visitors are just redirected to the Google homepage. The only way to get in is to make a search of one of the key phrases, as Rosett did. And it looks like each phrase works only once, as that one he used now returns as regular search result.

According to Rosett’s LinkedIn page, he’s been working for Google as a software engineer since August 2015.

About the Author: Ann M. Johnson is creative blogger, mostly interested in technology, gadgets, business and science. Currently she is working part-time as academic writer at http://chicessays.com/, where she helps students with assignments.