All the author really did was restate the innovator's dilemma for this specific case. Yahoo's directories were more profitable to it than search and thus searc

All the author really did was restate the innovator's dilemma for this specific case. Yahoo's directories were more profitable to it than search and thus search innovations were a threat to existing revenue. (See also: pg's Yahoo article about Yahoo's ad sales) So innovation in search (and ads) came from outside Yahoo. Similarly, any innovation that fundamentally threatens Google's ad revenue is unlikely to be pursued by Google itself. So there's no good reason to expect that sort of innovation to come from them. Hence the example of Siri turning a spoken query into a vocalized answer (whenever it can), rather than a list of links with ads around them. Though the author is off a bit when they imply there's no room for ads in the process. As most use of Siri still involves looking at the screen, on which it would be trivial to drop a narrow banner ad or promoted link.