Because they were pretty much a non story? Less than 1/2 the impact of something like the iPad, and lots of people switched them that could to Windows anyway. On their best years (around 2008-2011) they sold like 16-20 million units per year (iPad has sold ~350 million units thus far).

No. The actual price of Windows XP ULCPC was $11 to $15, though OEMs could get that close to zero by installing crapware.

Sales soon evaporated because the high cost of installing Linux on netbooks -- and the even higher cost of supporting them -- made them unprofitable.

Worse, a lot of those netbooks were returned, which killed manufacturers working on very slim margins.

I had one of those netbooks, it came with both XP and some sort of Linux in dual boot. The thing worked like crap though.

Because Intel freaked and pushed everyone over to ATOMs where as the early EEEPCs etc had used discount celerons.

Basically Intel feared that the netbooks plus citrix would strangle the lucrative ultraportable market segment.

At the same time MS gave Windows XP another stay of execution just to have a Windows option to offer OEMs (Vista was just too darn bulky).

Thing is that XP, or more correctly the version of the Windows Update version it used, had a flaw where it would grow slower and slower over time as it tried to enumerate all the patches on each boot.

Intel and Microsoft gave discounts to manufacturers who followed the agreed netbook specification, and the spec evolved slightly over time...

Anybody who didn't want to follow the spec was free to do whatever they liked.