Its technically true just like its true that they didn't invent online search. Their innovations (either in house or through acquisitions) have fundamentally changed the ad space as the GP mentions. And this is an ongoing process as well as more and more people move off the more mainstream media platforms.

And Apple didn’t invent the smartphone, but they reimagined it in a way that basically made things 10X better in UX, just like buying ads on google is 10X better than the process described earlier.

s/better/easier, to be safe

No, but they had the user base, the data, the presence and the focus to do it better than the established ad companies.

And now we're at the point where more than half of all digital ad revenue in some countries are pocketed by Facebook and Google.

I mentioned some of the history, including the DoubleClick acquisition, in the essay.