They don't care if you resell your pixel phone to a friend or put it on craigslist. They care if you and a thousand other people are being paid to purchase stock for an unauthorized reseller.
Google (and any other product company) wants their products to be sold through authorized channels only so they can manage distribution, keep pricing consistent, and ensure that the devices are legitimate and have not been tampered with before sale.
Customers receiving phones with malware pre-installed is a real problem for companies like oneplus and xaiomi who don't clamp down on unauthorized resellers.
That's a fair point, but the only reason this kind of thing happened is because they purchased their phone via Google from their Google Account, and the consequence, their account being disabled, is really out of proportion with the act of selling the phone to a reseller. I think it would be more fair for Google to limit the ability to purchase products in the future for people known to have done this, but significantly unfair/burdensome to disable their account as their account potentially has their entire life on it. It would be akin to the power company deciding something you did was "bad" and turning off your power, or your landlord kicking you out because of something "bad" they didn't like, regardless of your "bad" action.
Dont you thing of these people who "participate in an organized ring" had a real business - that was scammed they would remain quiet? Take for example PPI insurance scam in UK.
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FFS. If you're going to participate in an organized ring to deprive people of buying a scarce item so that you can flip it to your ring leader for a profit so that the ring leader can then mark it up and sell it for considerably more then you deserve what's coming to you.
This isn't just about reselling an individual phone. They knew full well what they were doing was shady.
Because if you have a bad experience with a Pixel phone, you'll complain about it on social media.
Never mind that it's not their device anymore. Never mind that your problem is because the reseller pried it open and swapped out the battery. Never mind the malware the reseller loaded. Never mind the 30% price premium and "Advanced Warranty" you had to buy, because Google's site was out of stock. Never mind the battery-draining Candy Crunch [sic] game you installed because you mis-clicked.
These days, both Apple and Google are held responsible for anything that happens with their phones, no matter what else goes on in the ecosystem. No wonder they try to control the experience as much as possible.
Google (and any other product company) wants their products to be sold through authorized channels only so they can manage distribution, keep pricing consistent, and ensure that the devices are legitimate and have not been tampered with before sale.
Customers receiving phones with malware pre-installed is a real problem for companies like oneplus and xaiomi who don't clamp down on unauthorized resellers.