Google gave the market the option to go for a completely open environment with the Nexus One, and in the words of this wired article what did it get in return?
"Not cool enough."
The phone is brilliant, but the market went elsewhere with it's carrier locked subsidised junk models. That's just a market reality, like it or not. Google tried to "do the right thing" and the market went somewhere else. Making all these points about what they could've done instead which basically amounted to "become a direct competitor with Apple on the retail level" are not realistic considering everything we know about Google and it's views and practices on direct end user support.
If the market wants to shoot itself in the foot by choosing shitty products, that's their cross to bear. It's not reasonable to place the blame on one of the few companies that provided an out and had it thrown squarely back in their face. The only problem I fear is that due to the failure of the Nexus One they won't invest in a Nexus Two and the Android ecosystem will become a swirling morass of telco crippled product, thus ending differentiation between it and the competing iOS ecosystem.
The article does however make an interesting point, HP might do better with webOS, they are accustomed to end user hand holding and playing the retail / marketing game. If they can push a truly open ecosystem and manage to be successful in units moved as well, they may well end up being what Android might have been if the market had let it go in the direction Google had clearly wanted it to go from inception.