  We reinvestigate the putative giant spin splitting at the surface of
SrTiO$_3$ reported by Santander-Syro $et~al.$ [Nature Mat. 13, 1085 (2014)].
Our spin- and angle-resolved photoemission experiments on (001) oriented
surfaces supporting a two-dimensional electron liquid with high carrier density
show no detectable spin polarization in the photocurrent. We demonstrate that
this result excludes a giant spin splitting while it is fully consistent with
the unconventional Rashba-like splitting seen in band structure calculations
that reproduce the experimentally observed ladder of quantum confined subbands.
