I doubt very much that that anecdote is true. I was involved in the development of Unity at Canonical, just as I was involved in the development of the Eee PC

I doubt very much that that anecdote is true. I was involved in the development of Unity at Canonical, just as I was involved in the development of the Eee PC at Xandros before that. Unity developers were very well aware that there was a small but extremely vocal minority of users who expressed their strong dislike and contempt for their work. We were also aware of the much larger and quieter plurality of people who liked and appreciated it, and maybe the majority of people who just turned on their computer and got to work without a second thought about the desktop environment. A part of my job was managing the negative feedback from users... I think would have been aware of any decision to change back to Gnome based on the strident and biased opinion of some rando on the internet. For the record, Unity was discontinued as a business decision to make Canonical more profitable for its investors. Plain and simple. Normal everyday business.