I've been in the same huge company for 25 years and management styles and practices have changed at a tectonic pace--sometimes gradually and sometimes abruptly--but always moving. HR is generally the most impacted by trendy management fads and suffers/benefits from the most turnover. The use of GPA in hiring has changed along with everything else. At a management offsite, an HR manager mentioned screening applicants by GPA and several senior hiring managers exploded--furious at HR's presumptuous interference. It was comical to see that nobody agreed on what our basic hiring practices were.

So don't take what Google says as anything more than a current snapshot that will change. And always assume CBer's reports of how their company does it as a random snapshot in time of one person's jaded view of their company's policy. (That's a fair assessment of my post, too.)