I feel like the brutal level of cost cutting by the departing...

I feel like the brutal level of cost cutting by the departing CEO was what caused customer relationships to sour. In an overcrowded industry where their competitors are spending heavily, funded by VC firms or their own profits like telus, appen keeps on cutting cost to survive. The cost cutting is on support, platform maintenance, crowd wages, you can go on /r/workonline and see their crowd workers complaining nonstop, quality control has gone to hell from these cost cuts.

And about the google revenue/cost, I don't think it includes crowd expense, so 13.5M is pretty decent.

What appen needs is a CEO who understands the industry. If such a person comes, he'll do a massive $250M+ cap raise and turn the company around, because that's the money required to catch up with competition and rebuild customer relationships. These small cost cutting efforts are just appen's attempt to live another day, like a junkie living day by day by stealing and selling their body, it will not stop the inevitable demise. All IMHO.

Also somebody has mentioned this before: beware the words "depend", "uncertain", in their last sentence.