You shouldn't apologize, because it was a mostly solved problem and times changed. Search "corporate opportunity doctrine". It became unsolved in the last 30-40 years.

Corporate Governance doesn’t help when either the board is just a rubber stamp for the CEO or the CEO still holds a controlling stake in the company.

And in the case of successful founders, even without a controlling stake, just their reputation makes it harder to go against the CEO. Could anyone on the board have challenged Gates or Steve Jobs 2.0? In the modern era, who would challenge a decision by Bezos or Hastings?

Is that necessarily a bad thing? If Gates or Jobs acted unwantonly despotic, then the checks and balances are in place for their removal. Sometimes, reputations speak for themselves and must be respected as a function of following a leader.

No it's not. I don't think anyone but Jobs could have made the deal with Microsoft that help save Apple[1]. Just like only Nixon could go to China.

Could any other CEO besides Hastings transitioned Netflix from a DVD business to a streaming media business, and on top of that spend millions of dollars developing a set top box and then decide at the last minute it wasn't in their strategic interest to sell it and spin it off (Roku). The same could be said about Bezos and Amazon.

[1] No the money MS "gave" Apple didn't save them. Continued software support with Office and IE helped a lot.