A bit harsh I thought!
Android and Chrome do the same sort of thing to detect internet access; this is how Android pops the notification to sign in to the network.
Then, at least on Windows, the results of NCSI flow down into WinHTTP and a ton of other things so apps can know the status of the network.
It's also possible, via Group Policy, to configure a different URL for NCSI. This is useful in enterprises which may not have the NCSI URL available to unauthenticated things (eg: the OS) but still has internet access via proxies.
It's also possible to disable NCSI, captive portal detection, etc, which is useful on some closed network boxes (eg: some enterprises) but this will cause problems if the machines are ever used on public/walled garden/captive portal networks.
The biggest problem I've seen with this comes about where captive portal detection is disabled, a user ends up on a captive portal, tries to hit a website to satisfy the portal, but due to most sites that normal users will try being https these days can't get their session redirected in order to display the portal, so they think "the internet is broken". The NCSI/captive portal detection makes a point of using HTTP so captive portal redirection can work properly.