When GCP's container engine launched[1] in 2014 it was initially referred to by the anagram 'GKE' yet corresponded to the name 'Google Container Engine'.
After achieving CNCF certification in Nov 2017[2], GCP began using the term 'Kubernetes' within the product name, rebranding it as 'Google Kubernetes Engine'.
At least as far back as Oct 2017, members of the CNCF did not have to pay any fees[3] to participate in the conformance program.
Is it possible that executives within Google were unhappy about the marketshare gains of GKE and attribute this partially to the time it took their product to achieve certification?
If so, could that have led them to push other open source initiatives within the company to retain their trademarks under tighter control, even if that required creating an organization with less experience handling international trademark registration?
As per the post, IBM's stated standpoint is: "IBM continues to believe that the best way to manage key open source projects such as Istio is with true open governance, under the auspices of a reputable organization with a level playing field for all contributors, transparency for users, and vendor-neutral management of the license and trademarks."
[1] - https://www.infoq.com/news/2014/11/google-cloud-container-en...
[2] - https://cloud.google.com/blog/products/gcp/introducing-certi...
[3] - https://github.com/cncf/k8s-conformance/commit/34683a3316473...