It was developed and released during a time where people obsessed with touch interfaces thanks to deficient computing devices like phones and tablets. So many people were wholly convinced that these things were going to completely replace general purpose computing, so projects like Gnome, which were being run by Red Hat, had to follow along one way or another, though they probably did so willingly.

In any case, I am SO glad those days are over. It was far, far worse than the AI hype that we have to put up with today.