Quality of Internships

I'm a senior CS student at UC Irvine. In the past two or so years, Google opened a campus in Irvine and have formed strong ties with UCI career center. This has opened up a lot of opportunities to work as an intern at Google.

Now I've had internships before with challenging interviews only to find the work mediocre and boring. I'm sick of wasting my time with companies that claim they want brilliant people only to not use their full potential. They could've easily hire & trained uneducated people to actually do the work they offer.

I'm very skeptical of Google. The people I've spoken to don't divulge any information on what they actually do which makes me believe that they have nothing of real interest to share. I know first hand that it really sucks to tell your peers that what seemed to be a great company was actually boring and dry.

I would like to know if any interns or ex-interns at Google could share their experience of actual work there. Did you work along smart colleagues? Were the colleagues smart enough that you would "trust" them to mentor you (as in they weren't inscrutable or perceived to be smart/clever but actually are)?

Do you feel you had gained something of value from the work you did?

Do you get to work alongside other interns and are you expected to compete with your peers?

Has anyone continued onto part-time or full-time positions after their internships? If you don't find the work desirable are you able to switch out to a different position?

I've read in the past that Google is very lax and you can easily be transferred to other areas if you are unhappy, but I would like to hear peoples experiences first hand.

Thanks in advance.