It's the holiday season. Of course there are going to be discounts. If you follow a couple of the links in the article you'll find that some of those discount were temporary promotions.
Having BOGO (buy one get one) deals wasn't a sign that Android was in danger of being a failure, but Motorola certainly was. Motorola desperately needed to have a hit with their models of the Droid so I suspect they practically gave them away to Verizon.