The inconsistency in how different companies and products within companies handle this are indeed annoying, and speak poorly for product management and engineering at these companies.
But it's not as simple a problem as the article wants us to believe. Local laws often dictate different content or function for sites and applications served in their jurisdiction, leaving the product with a hard choice: if Japanese law requires that I get a Japanese version (from a function point of view) of a site when browsing from Japan, but the browser settings request French language, I may or may not have a French translation of the Japanese function to serve.
I think a lot of the irregularity is just bad product management and engineering, but some of it is actually trying to deal with a hard problem.
But it's not as simple a problem as the article wants us to believe. Local laws often dictate different content or function for sites and applications served in their jurisdiction, leaving the product with a hard choice: if Japanese law requires that I get a Japanese version (from a function point of view) of a site when browsing from Japan, but the browser settings request French language, I may or may not have a French translation of the Japanese function to serve.
I think a lot of the irregularity is just bad product management and engineering, but some of it is actually trying to deal with a hard problem.