I can assure you my story is accurate. The interviewers do not make decisions regarding the entire hiring event but they do give feedback regarding how you did in each interview. I was given poor feedback due to, according to him, a zero tolerance like policy where the data model for that particular question had to be complete and I was unable to complete it.

That was my first technical interview over the phone so it was pretty obvious it was related to that single interview. One of the Googlers I knew that checked the system said the same.