alt Hacker News>Given this industry, I'd be hard pressed if 3.7 Flash was still in use by end of year, so why not make it the official pricing
It was probably to placate some kind of general internal pricing/revenue benchmark that doesn't account for new model releases. Politicians do shit like this incessantly and it reeks of bureaucracy.
I suspect it's a bit of a signal to investors etc.
"Hey, we are not in a race to the bottom. This is our usual pricing, but this now is a promotion because we know we're coming from behind and need to entice users."
They're drawing a line in the sand on monetisation and signalling that to everyone, while in reality offering it a deep discount (no idea if profitable or not) knowing that this model will probably be obsolete before then.