I would like to take roughly the "Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity" approach here and suggest that it's not an intentional crippling, but the fact that the product developers likely do not design for a logged out experience in the least.

I run tech for a few websites, and we could design for the "no JS" user, there are likely MINOR changes needed for much better support, but it's simply not something that we consider at all. I imagine it's similar with Google, they're designing for the logged in user, with maybe automated testing on the logged out user.