Not anymore, really. It was the case a couple of years ago but right now, for rank-and-file employees, Google downlevels heavily and targets around 80% of the market rate. For some reason, people are still flocking at their doors and because of high supply of candidates, they can afford to be both very selective and very cheap.
I have a suspicion given a bunch of things happening there (of which I have only outsider knowledge, mind you) that they're already well into a transition to a more boring bigco stance & structure, and are just letting their reputational momentum carry them until people notice rather than coming out and saying that. Starting to push comp downward would be in line with that.
that's what 'my' (as it's the same person pinging me for the past couple of years) recruiter keeps telling me. It's not a net plus considering that I can just look elsewhere in the first place. No point in taking a paycheck cut for a while to do some boring work for a company about which I have ethical concerns so that maybe when I want to change jobs I'll have a competitive edge.
