If you trace this all the way back I think it all stems from Netscape Time.
This is a classic failure mode with these kinds of acquisitions. The problem, I take it, is one of a mismatch of scales. Pocket and services like it are not Big Businesses. They do not support a massive base of users, monetized by attention and ads (“eyeballs”). They are, from everything I can see, what has sometimes pejoratively been called “lifestyle businesses”. But outside the world of Big Tech specifically and Big Business more generally, we just call a “lifestyle business” a business.