All they had to do was leave it alone. Maybe leave a team to do moderation and keep things running operationally, and done.
Heck, spin it off as a sub company and resell the stack overflow brand and do nothing.
They actively went out of their way to get rid of it. If I didn't know any better I'd say this was backroom dealing where job ad company owners somehow pressured the CEO to stop competing with them because they were just too good.
