I agree with you that this is ridiculous.

However, you really need to define success vs failure before declaring any company as one or the other.

Taking Zynga as an example, viewed from the position of "making Mark Pincus an awful lot of money" Zynga was a smashing success, while viewed from the position of "painting Mark Pincus as a credible person to do business with in the future" Zynga was a huge failure.