Google sure has done a good job positioning themselves as the place to aspire to be. I have several friends that count them as their dream employer. Is it the ping-pong tables, the great cafeteria, the in-house barber and dentist? Because it sure is no longer the do no evil, is it?

I think that's a big part of it, for me at least. It's part a reflection of the playfulness that for many hackers was a driving force behind their abilities and a sign of an effort to address all the needs of employees in order to help them reach their full potential. Plus, they put seem to emphasize (they may have been the first big company to do this, I'm not sure) the importance of developers having parallel career tracks for things like management and programming. In a traditional org you will find that you inevitably plateau unless you get into management.

I probably, like many other developers, overly romanticize working at a place like Google. I'm sure there are your standard gripes from working at any big corporation: shitty management, uncaring bureaucracy, etc. Which is probably why so many people pursue that kind of environment in startups (just check out Dropbox's jobs page).