No, it's a Google thing. No American company has ever asked for my GPA, but the Google HR person next door said that if I wanted to interview for a job at Google, HR would demand my GPA (from decades ago!) and would not grant an interview unless it was above some (secret) threshold. If their recruiters reached out to me, HR would still require the GPA, but she said that the interviewers might not care about it.
What stage of interview? I have had two phone screens with Google recruiters, and one actual phone interview. Nobody ever asked for my GPA, and my degree is from a university most people here have probably never heard of (and is EE, to boot).
