A lot of people choose to work at Google over working at Microsoft, IBM, Sun, Yahoo, etc. Let's face it, if you can get a job at Google, you can get a job at most of those other places. But, Google pays a lower salary than all of those places for the same position. The way they make Google a more attractive place to work is all of the other non-salary compensation and the general vibe.
Even if they spend $30/day/employee on food (I was also shocked by the snack cost alone, which I've heard from folks inside Google...all those $3 juices and such add up fast), it's still not all that big of a deal compared to the thousands they don't spend on salary.
Likewise for the dual monitors, Steelcase Leap chairs, and the ergonomics team that Google employs to keep their employees sitting and working comfortably for longer hours.
All of this stuff probably comes close to making the cost per employee as high as Microsoft, Yahoo and Sun pay...and yet, Google still gets first pick of the best talent. And it's not because Google employees get to work on cooler stuff--they don't. A large percentage of Googlers work on really boring crap. Building tools to sell ads and scaling them out to a massive scale is probably not an exciting development job.
Everybody at this point is probably wondering why MS, Yahoo, and Sun don't just start doing all of the stuff that Google does, and make their workplace as cool and attractive as Google. They can't, of course, because they'd have to lower salaries for everyone in order to open the budget for it (or lock everyone into their current salary for the next couple of years and eat the losses until inflation catches up). And, of course, that would lead to a mass exodus...because nobody will accept a pay cut.
Say what you will about Google, but the whole food+massages+snacks+etc. thing is genius on a whole new scale from the recruiting and employee satisfaction perspective. And, since they make $1 million per employee (a number beaten only by Exxon and a few others) they can afford to spend a few grand each year shoveling food into their employees to keep them feeling fat and happy.