the thing that you're missing here is that Cook is gonna get roasted if he doesn't take every opportunity to maximize growth. That means the future roadmap as written PLUS ads in maps and other decisions like that. There's no such thing as enough.
Not having ads was the thing that separated Apple from Google. Apple was winning by selling hardware with software that didn’t need ads to support the business model. Ads just feel greedy, especially when they are still charging a premium price on many things. How tolerant will people be of high prices when the resulting product feels cheap? This is a race to the bottom, which was a race Jobs was unwilling to compete in.
it's not a race to the bottom, it's a zero sum game. someone is gonna lose money but everyone who currently has a stake thinks they can bail out before the crash (or if the people in charge try to abort the game and initiate a more sustainable but less immediately profitable model). Stockholders essentially hold a company hostage like that: maximize short term growth of my asset value right now or I tank the entire org, then when the bad decisions you made today come back to haunt you I dump stock, pull up stakes and haul ass right before the whole thing explodes. These people kill sheep for wool.
