As someone who was rejected by Google the first time, and hired the second time through, I went through a similar range of emotions during that first rejection. (I did not have an Ivy league education and only had a 3.2 GPA)
It was only after I was later hired into Google that I learned from my original recruiter that I had actually done quite well in my first interview process. What I did not know at the time of my rejection letter was that they had narrowed down their pool of potential applicants to about 1200 resumes for three open positions they were looking to fill. Apparently, I made it into the last round of 10-12 applicants and just did not have the experience level with the specific tools for the job as others did. Thus, I received the same rejection letter the other 1196 people received, and never even knew I did as well as I did.
My advice would be to just stay in contact and keep Google updated anytime you have something new added to your resume or skill set. Based on what you have described, it actually sounds like you might have done pretty well. There are too many factors going on behind the scenes to say one way or another why you did not make it through this time.
Wow, 1200 resumes for 3 positions, I didn't know that getting recruited by Google was that competitive, good for them that they can afford being that competitive.
Do you mind telling us if in the first interview you aced all your interviews, because I surely didn't.
The selectivity numbers I've heard for the whole process are about 1:2000, with about an order of magnitude decrease for each stage of the process (resume screen, phone screen, in-person interview, hire).
Keep in mind that like most statistics, these are misleading. Google gets a lot of applications from people who just want to work at Google and have no relevant skills, or who may be friends/SOs of current employees, or who ping their local Googler on Reddit or HN to submit their resume. These go into the system because who knows, we may find a gem, but realistically they have about 0 chance of being hired.
Getting to the in-person interview stage basically means we have reason to believe that you're a competent software engineer, but the acceptance rate is still something like 1 in 10 or 1 in 20 from that point. It's tougher than getting into Harvard and roughly on par (perhaps a bit easier) than getting into YCombinator.
It was only after I was later hired into Google that I learned from my original recruiter that I had actually done quite well in my first interview process. What I did not know at the time of my rejection letter was that they had narrowed down their pool of potential applicants to about 1200 resumes for three open positions they were looking to fill. Apparently, I made it into the last round of 10-12 applicants and just did not have the experience level with the specific tools for the job as others did. Thus, I received the same rejection letter the other 1196 people received, and never even knew I did as well as I did.
My advice would be to just stay in contact and keep Google updated anytime you have something new added to your resume or skill set. Based on what you have described, it actually sounds like you might have done pretty well. There are too many factors going on behind the scenes to say one way or another why you did not make it through this time.