I've heard stories of employers using Google, but seems to me any company that did that would be opening itself up to a bunch of lawsuits. There are plenty of things you're not allowed to ask about at interviews because they are potentially discriminatory (for instance, asking candidates - particularly women - if they plan to have children), but you could potentially discover this information from a Google search.
That's why you contract out with a binary pass fail, and/or search for red flags, so the 3rd party replies if the dude is clean or perhaps mentions some areas requiring further study.
I can't be the only one here to have passed this process. I've done it a couple times. This vaguely resembles my military security clearance some decades ago in that my Army CO never had any idea I got picked up by the cops for truancy after skipping out of gym class in my sophomore high school year, but the clearance guy knew, didn't really care (I mean, come on, really?), and issued my clearance and that credential is good enough for my CO not to personally investigate my police record.
Needless to say the pass fail criteria provided to the 3rd party doesn't include things like "Is the candidate a jew?". They ARE often dumb, but not that dumb.
Usually it involves a lot of verification of resume "facts" like if the candidate claims no criminal record but a simple glance at a public facebook feed shows all manner of talk about his extensive time in jail, the red flag gets raised. No need to tell the company what church he attends, just warn them to take a second (first?) look at the criminal background report.
