There were a couple posts a while ago about the Semco management style which felt like a much better solution than the traditional vertical hierarchy. I would have thought Google would be a lot flatter as an organization.
The number of times a product idea was sent from an SVP to the divison VP who forwarded it to the group head of product who forwarded this with the note added "SVP wants this done by the end of the day" was more than I'd even like to think about.