[ubernostrum]

You're not going to get anywhere arguing with people who believe these are useful questions.

Though to be honest, Google uses those kinds of questions and apparently treats them as useful, so I'm not sure why you'd have wanted to work there.

[wutbrodo]

I've been on both sides of the interview process at Google over the last half decade (I no longer work there) and I can tell you that asking people to recite random facts by rote was not part of their interview guidelines for as long as I was there. This includes a couple dozen interviews I conducted and the candidate notes of the other interviewers.

[ubernostrum]

I got hit with a barrage of random trivia during one of the phone screens I did last year.

Eventually got fed up with their process, told the interviewer what I thought of it and hung up.

(which, to point out at least one upside, is the only way I've ever discovered of getting a company I don't want to work for to stop bugging me with recruiter spam)