Remember windows phone?
For how much more would you siphon money into basically empty stores, to see it as having gone "100%" of the way?
Which is even more damning of Microsoft / Google management.
The sunk cost fallacy is not really about what the venture would actually do. One could be said to have fallen prey to it even if they double down and the venture eventually succeeds.
What's important is that at the time of the decision (a) the path doesn't seem to be working, and (b) they think "but I've spend too much to quit now".
This is more likely when one assumes it can still has a chance to succeed, than if they assume it will inevitably result in failure. Nobody that assumes inevitable failure would decide to continue.
All I know is at this point Microsoft had two options: continue investing into creating an alternative to Apple, or cancel their plans and sit back and let the Office/Azure revenue flow in.
Maybe it was a long shot, maybe they decided the size of Apple's customer base divided by two was not enough to satiate them, but whatever the case, they signaled that they do not have the talent/gumption/appetite for risk to pull it off. But if any company did have the opportunity to go for it, I would think Microsoft (and Google) with their income stream would have been in position to do it.
Both companies seem to dip their toes, but never follow through.
I would have liked to see it succeed if only for there to be more competition.
It also had a great 'copy and paste' feature
This hits hard