"The first Googler who fixes it can genuinely claim to add billions of dollars of value to the internet." If by "the internet," he means Expedia, then I suppose I agree.
The larger story is correct, though. Companies leave a lot of money on the table by not looking for basic problems with their websites, apps, and other similar systems.
I regularly move away from (or never even start with) businesses that have these sorts of problems. It could be that in all of these cases I'm a unicorn, and no one else is having trouble, but I doubt it.
(I once thought of starting a consultancy that would simply examine websites for issues like this. I realized quickly that businesses simply wouldn't pay for such a service.)