Good point. But then many (most?) sites these days don't use a favicon.ico file in the root, but point to a .png or similar via a header tag as shown in the ar

Good point. But then many (most?) sites these days don't use a favicon.ico file in the root, but point to a .png or similar via a header tag as shown in the article (e.g. "<link rel=”icon” href=”/path/to/icon.png”>"). That has the same 'semantic' issue of the favicon being specific to the page and not site.