Really, that's not far from the truth. If you've worked at other well known "good" companies and worked on hot/important stuff, and that info is on linkedin, you will probably get approached by a google recruiter at some point. And unless you fuck up your call with them to make sure you're interested and a real person, that basically guarantees you a first round technical phone screen, which is the hardest part of getting hired at Google. You can study as much as you want and be the best engineer possible, but that won't matter if you don't get to the first round interview.

You basically "build" a linkedin profile that comes up when recruiters search for technically hot things, and then they will come knocking