It's a fairly time-honored tactic to redesign a brand that has lots of negative associations built up, and I could see Dara driving this as part of the overhaul. Typically that results in a full name change though.

Having read through this, it sounds like the brand team considered more radical changes but ultimately found that the broad name recognition and generally positive associations with the stark black/white aesthetic were too strong to ditch entirely. What remained was the ability to iterate on the original brand, and that's what you got.

I agree with ditching "the bit" icon in favor of a "U" though. That logo made zero sense, and always felt like a creative team stretching to imbue an abstract mark with some sort of meaning.