I think this year they've gone too far and done more harm than good. Its one thing to stipulate a promotional process. But there has been too much focus on what Google can do, not the phone itself.

But they've sidelined the actual Pixel 9 in favour of the sterile editing of Gemini, designed it to be more generic and lost their competitive pricing in a time of great deals on the iPhone 15 and S24 lines.

https://medium.com/@carlst-james/google-torpedoed-the-pixel-brand-6b84e7c73a75