From what I can tell, Google (and other companies) started using these kinds of questions as a way to cheaply filter sudden floods of applicants, not because this is the way to find the greatest geniuses of our time. Policies implemented under the gun have two unfortunate properties: they are wasteful and hard to change after the fact.
As the tactics of successful companies percolate through the rest of the industry, they take on a third unfortunate property: cargo-cult foolishness. Google asks binary search questions and they have great engineers. I want only the best engineers, therefore I will ask binary search questions. I don't know what else to do so I shall grade strictly on style points, because points are scientific, right?
Bleh. Put it another way: if there are a large number of productive creative people shut out by a culture of thoughtless interview checklisting, that's an opportunity for some smarter company to snap them up. Such a company would by necessity have an outlaw air about them. Who else would hire misfits? But gangs of talented misfits can be a powerful force.