They had a safe stable business with a loyal user base in a market niche they completely owned, could have basically just sat on their asses and de facto collected taxes from paranoid nerds and journalists for decades.

I just don't understand why they'd want to trade all that away for a chasing the same nebulous "something something AI" business plan as literally every other company in the tech industry right now. The odds they'll be competitive in such an endeavor and see a fraction of the success they had again is minuscule.