The Los Angeles office is right by Venice Beach, in a beautiful setting. It's a mid-sized office (~500 employees according to http://venice.patch.com/groups/business-news/p/silicon-beach...) in the same time-zone as Mountain View and a less than 1h flight to the mothership should you need to go there.

Unlike the main office, most people don't have to choose between commuting from SF or living in Mountain View, because Venice/Santa Monica is actually a nice area to live in :). Naturally, the breadth of projects is not as big as in Mountain View, but there's a number of exciting things happening here (computer vision, quantum AI etc).

The culture is slightly different, and they feel less 'big company' for the most part. They also take on a local flavour :) I've heard good things (in fact, better things than are said about HQ) about teams in remote offices, around camaraderie and ability to get stuff done. I think there are probably downsides too, and most people recommend you spend some time working out of Mountain View during your Google career, but I also got advised that spending a stint internationally is one of the best things to do for one's career there.

I didn't work out of any remote office full-time, but I visited seven satellite offices during my time there (nine if you count YouTube/SF). They were all unique and awesome.

I rather like working in the Seattle office. It's large enough to have nice (and getting nicer) amenities, while still feeling mostly like a medium-size shop that happens to be able to pull on all of Google's technical resources.

Also, at least in my case, I don't get that "satellite office" feeling from the work I'm doing. The people I need to talk to most all sit within Nerf gun range.

I work in the Chicago office and I love it! Our site lead is really passionate about making sure we're relevant, and the team I'm on has a substantial presence in Chicago, so I don't really feel like I'm in a satellite office.

Every office is better than the other offices in some way. As someone in NYC, I'm jealous of MTV's rock climbing walls and extended cafe hours, Montreal's location, and London's coffee lab. (OK, Montreal has a rock climbing wall too :)

As for actual work, projects seem randomly distributed, with some weight towards Mountain View since it's so much bigger than the other offices.

I actually spent most of my time in the San Bruno office, which is where YouTube's team mostly sits, but occasionally ventured to the SFO office and the MTV offices.

I've heard great things about the New York offices as well as the Zurich, Tokyo, and London offices though!

Personally, I've talked to Googlers all over the world and there seems to be a consistency in openness and passion.

The SF office is the bomb.