Thanks for this perspective. It's mind-boggling that a company with such resources, talent and presence in the whole world is unable to innovate in such a simple thing and it seems they're going similar route Microsoft did with its smartphone, which they eventually killed.
Let's look at it from a different perspective. Google is unable to properly launch a phone worldwide and the decisions are incomprehensible to a thinking human. They support Pixel 8 in Ireland (5 million population), Norway (5.4 million), Denmark (5.9) but they don't in Poland (38 million, part of European Union for 20 years) where they bought one of the largest offices for over $600 million USD to support 2,500 employees. Poles consider Pixel's price a fair price, not an expensive one. Not to mention lack of Pixel presence in at least some Asian countries with at least several hundred millions of potential customers.
As for the technicalities, they even did not enter all radio frequencies and countries in their version of Android, so that 5G or some Wi-Fi bands don't work in some countries. When you roam from supported country to an unsupported one, you may loose part or all connectivity. They did the same in Chromecast. Multiple layoffs confirm it's all about money at Google, so why they don't reach for an easy money from smartphone market? Lack of vision, lack of knowledge, name it however you want.