[houseabsolute]

There is a reason why all the carriers in the US subsidize phones with long contracts. The reason is that Americans like to spread out their purchases. Offering the opportunity to not do so isn't going to have a major impact because too few people want to buy their phone outright for it to matter.

In any case, the vision I'm questioning is the design vision. If the sales method were the only novel thing about this device, Google could as easily have paid another company to release their newest phone through Google's portal instead of directly through the network.