Great article Sarah. Thanks for sharing information about this important shift in the publishing world which affects all of us who work with WordPress.

For WordPress to regain the publishing market, WordPress has to stop focusing on consumer marketshare and start to focus on being more useful to businesses. As I've said at great length, never ending updates and update pressure do nothing to endear the WordPress platform to anyone building serious tools or managing a business.

WordPress/Automattic should not be wasting money and diluting itself with VC floats to fund advertising to consumers. WordPress has more than enough visibility. WordPress needs to be more stable and more secure to attract more (serious) users.