It seems odd to me, and very dangerous business wise, that Google would reject someone because of their lack of a degree.

I'm a writer, and my experience in journalism is that editors actively screen out people with degrees in journalism because it teaches them bad practices (In all actuality it teaches them good [read: old] practices, but kills personal voice which is now everything, praise Hunter S. Thompson!). 1+ years experience writing always beats 4+ years in a degree program with 0+ years experience actually writing.

I've always thought programming was akin to writing, it's all about putting pieces together to make the whole work better. My brother went the programming way and I went the writing way (I tried programming, but I quickly realized I couldn't do it as a day-to-day 9-5 job). So I don't really get why Google would require a degree, because surely the most important thing is if someones code is elegant.