Nice article. I remember reading about CORBA in uni days. The article summarized it well as it became a bulky technology with very length and confusing documentation. Industry on the other hand, was ready to adopt simpler technology that focused on web-based protocols, like HTTP (HTTPS).
Then SOA came and it changed the landscape completely with REST-based services, that relied on HTTP protocol themselves.
Finally, it comes down to simplicity. A technology that is too complex to implement and understand will not easily meet demands of constant change and innovation. Hence, as mentioned, it is reduced to a niche technology.
You skip an important part where "web based protocols" means web services, which in turn was synonymous with SOAP. This architecture was based on remote method invocations and was dominant for the better part of a decade (if it isn't still, for some domains).
