Bazaar on the slow track

Maybe the sentiment was that Canonical could not wait for appropriately usable solutions to emerge or become dominant in the areas of version control (Bazaar, in its different forms) and project collaboration (Launchpad), and so they set out to make their own solutions as part of a larger endeavour.

Unfortunately, with Unity being the other prominent example, they don't have a great record of getting people on board or outperforming the other projects in those fields. And so the gamble of striking out on their own hasn't paid off as much as might have been expected.