I smell bullshit.

This never made it to outside the US, what exactly was it? (the linked help page doesn’t actually say)

IMHO this was a good deal for Google, you paid $1300 for getting a phone worth $800 AND due to the subscription you were entrenched in the walled garden giving all your data to Google. Win-win for them

Another one for the list of things killed by Google because it wasn’t instantly making truckloads of money.