While true, it doesn't even have to be a pivot. It can be a sale of asset (volontary or necessary), an acquihire where the project and data just become some old vault to be disposed of and dozens other scenario.
I'm sure no one at Yahoo actually thought or had any plan for all of that personal data to be data mined wholesale by Verizon a decade later. And nobody at Google right now believes all that data could be sold to Comcast or whatever. But things happen and then...
