You know, I never actually knew what it stood for.
It's the same dodge as the service contractors, but for programmers: You're technically an employee of a separate company that then contracts your labor back to Google. It's a big open secret loophole to pay less in taxes and in overall benefits.
E.g. you work in the same buildings, ride the same buses, and eat the same food, but enough of a "fire-wall" is maintained between you and the "real" Googlers to satisfy the government that you're not legally an employee of Google.
The project I worked on was so inefficient that I suspect that Google is simply big enough and rich enough to sequester talented programmers just to keep them from working for competitors.
