Does Google still do this too? Last thing I knew Google would stick you wherever they decided, not necessarily where your strengths were and where you wanted to be.
I was under the impression (possibly wrongly) that you could relatively freely change teams at Google assuming you weren't entirely unsuitable for the job, and were reasonable about not changing team too frequently and actually getting stuff done.
From what I have heard, "not too frequently" means once every 18 months, so some people have complained about sticking on a team they don't like for a year and a half.