(1) Pride. The company thought it could do better than the other things on the (non-commercial) market, and underestimated the task.

(2) Greed. The company demanded its own intellectual property.

I’m sure it was combination of both. It certainly got its own IP, but undoubtedly at great cost.

The non-commercial systems were judged by him to be too immature. The company spent months developing its own system.

…which would therefore have been even more immature than the systems he had already vetoed :)

p.s. I like the new live comment preview functionality.