Yes you have raised very relevant concerns.
I'm afraid the financials of the decision is out of my league, and I know it's had an impact, whether the long term effect will be positive or negative is a matter that I still watch with skeptical reservations of my own, I just feel they handled it fairly decently considering the scope of steem/steemit, not as well as a cooperate site would have perhaps, but I strongly suspect they had no intention to cause damage, and I also suspect that if they were to do it again, they would probably fair better.
We're dealing with new ground right? and that's hard to cover, next time lets all advocate smaller updates, I think that would make sense to you.