I know it's just anecdata but Google also lowballed me very hard. They even offered me less than I was currently making at Microsoft, and when I told them that, they basically said, "well, that's how it is." I walked away, and now get an email every year asking me if I'd reconsider. Maybe it was the wrong decision, but it really left a bad taste in my mouth. As a woman in engineering, I now totally believe in the Google pay gap, especially if they are lowballing people coming in.
Google lowballed the heck out of me to start, but they were willing to match absolutely any offer from any other company. Their recruiting process is rough but everyone I’ve spoken to has ended up with a competitive offer at the end. You might just have had an exceptionally incompetent recruiter
