But Pixel is the 1st party google experience, and that's what those people are looking for. I'd hazard a guess they don't care about what default applications are in AOSP.
Then if you say "I'm looking for 1st party google experience" that's all good. But when you equate AOSP experience with Google experience, or what's worse: criticize other vendors purely on basis of them not inherently being google - that's when the argument stops making any sense.
(And looking in this thread, many people do exactly that)