> Other parts of Google can't stop themselves from sending spam from what are supposed to be gold-plated VIPs.

Seems like a badly run company.

(Insert that caricature of the MSFT org chart with guns pointing in all directions.)

at that scale i don't believe it is possible to do much better on this particular issue at least.

MSFT has same policy. Office365 does not treat Microsoft.com emails any differently. Only exception is Office365 transactional emails.

This seems logical, you don’t want your service to get a bad rep because some internal division marketing team goes dumb. Also, security in case individuals get hacked.