They where under IBM ownership at the time, so IBM did kill it. The software now branded as CentOS is basically Fedora, which is fine for desktops, but never felt good on servers. CentOS was perfect for a lot of us SysAdmins back in the day to use on our own servers etc, while using Red Hat at work. We also used it for anything PoC or servers that did not require support. These days licensing is easier using models like AWS Subscriptions, but we used to buy licenses in bulk, and if there where not enough licenses, we had to do the whole procurement dance.
Side note, in the 12 years that I used Red Hat at work, we used the support 2 times, and both times they forwarded some articles that we had already found and implemented. However, enterprise always demands some support contract behind critical systems to blame in case of disaster.
Honestly, who knows what would have happened if Red Hat was left as an independent entity, but we do know for sure that they did make the changes after the acquisition.