Microsoft has more employees and the three times I interviewed with them (and got accepted) it was a great experience, with perfect communication from their recruiters and interviewers. The one time I interviewed with Google (and got accepted, but I rejected them for MS) I pretty much went through a similar experience as the blog post, although the interviews themselves weren't bad, just the recruiting process.
So yea, size isn't an excuse.
Whenever I pointed out that the bigger the company, the more teams there would be to absorb and place incoming employees, the googlers in question would just ignore the response and emphasize that blind allocation was necessary because no other method of placing employees would scale to Google's size.
Sigh...
Microsoft's HR departments are completely siloed by business unit, and they don't share notes. If the rec you're applying for dries up, they do F-all to guide you into a new one. Each time you engage with a different BU you're completely back to square one.