I joined Google at 2008, and these questions were already banned by then.
Since there is no incentive for a large number of engineers to cook up stories about their interview experience at Google, I am calling this smoke as having some fire behind it.
I think there is incentive for failed interviewees to cook up stories - or at least to tell something very one-sided - because none of us like to believe we failed at something and feel better if we persuade ourselves it was stacked against us.
An incentive to maximize the value of their job position and already acquired leetcoding skills?
And in fact there's no need for explicit animosity by the failed interviewee. Someone who misunderstands a question badly enough to call it a brainteaser when it isn't is also likely to have performed badly on it.
For my part, about every few months I hit something that would make a great interview question, and then have a wonderful afternoon coding it up... Ymmv.
This is an open internet forum for anyone to type anything they feel like in. Of course, as far as you know, I might be an Uzbeki 12-year old, so that argument only goes so far...
I can imagine that Google interviews for other roles than Software Engineers can have any kind of wacky questions. But mostly these stories sound so much like the stories that used to go around about Microsoft interviewing, only with the company name switched, that I have to think it has to do with their inherent virality somehow.