Because it wasn't a god damned promise!! There should be nothing wrong with saying "this is our current plan" and that plan changing down the road (when it makes sense to change).
Anyone who has ever worked on anything in their life knows that plans change. Sometimes plans change to something else that's better. Sometimes ideas that are great on paper don't work in practice and need to be scrapped. Sometimes a plan is a great idea but an unanticipated roadblock makes it impossible or prohibitively expensive to accomplish.
So yes. Companies can never say anything publicly until it's already done. And I think that's a god damned shame. So again I say, this is why we can't have nice things.
That said, we all know "that guy". You know, the slick "idea guy" marketer who always has grand plans but never follows through? Who jumps on any hot PR topic that gets him publicity? After a while, you sort of tune him out, because you know his plans never amount to anything.
I have no idea whether cloudflares efforts fall into this pattern. But I know enough companies that behave this way that I think I can safely say that not all corporate "plans" are announced with the intentions of actually following through on them.
Anyone who has ever worked on anything in their life knows that plans change. Sometimes plans change to something else that's better. Sometimes ideas that are great on paper don't work in practice and need to be scrapped. Sometimes a plan is a great idea but an unanticipated roadblock makes it impossible or prohibitively expensive to accomplish.
So yes. Companies can never say anything publicly until it's already done. And I think that's a god damned shame. So again I say, this is why we can't have nice things.