I've seen this debate come up many times, and I think people are trying to make a distinction that doesn't always exist. Sure we can always point at something and say it's an outlier (thanks to Gladwell), but if we thought about it, we could rattle off 100s of companies which could really be considered 'features'.
The author's examples are pretty horrible, but consider... Xobni is an extension to outlook, and yet they have built a solid business from this.
Flickr's photo sharing was a feature of a game they were developing before they turned it into a stand-alone business.
Blue-Ray, Dolby, THX can all be considered 'features' as they are not a product in themselves, but an improvement of an existing product. Gracenote & AMG metadata services.
I suspect many of these were originally thought of as features before a business model was discovered for them.