I don’t know why anyone would subscribe to google services at this point. It’s pretty much a given that whatever it is, it’ll close within a few years.
FWIW you would still have to pay for the new phone, just in the form of the subscription fee. ATT has the same bullshit payment plan where you spread the cost of the phone over two years, but you never actually own the phone. If you upgrade, you still pay full price and you have to return your old phone.
Killing the subscription isn't cheating subscribers out of a free upgrade, because you haven't paid for the upgrade yet. You're still paying off the first phone, and they bundled some of their premium services with the purchase of the phone.
The bundle being a decent deal is what got me to sign up the first time. It's easy to budget the single cost as part of my Google Fi bill as opposed to Google Fi, YouTube Premium, and Google One all separately. I understand that the "upgrade" wasn't going to be free but I assumed that I would just keep paying for Pixel Pass which included all these perks and I would just get a Pixel 8 when it released and the Pixel 6 would be paid off/mine to keep. But now I will have to pay for all of those other services separately again (I don't even want the play pass and Google One is questionable) AND I'll just have to buy a new phone outright? At least my Fi bill will go down a bit but I think I'll be cancelling the services and possibly not buying the Pixel 8. It's kind of a lose lose if you ask me.
I went back and forth between android and iphone for a while. Privacy is also a big deal for me along with having my stuff work. Until recently I had a Linux laptop, which should theoretically be the most private but it was a lot of work - which is better than 15 years ago but still more than I’m willing to deal with at this point in my life. And obviously Linux smartphones aren’t something to seriously consider.
And while Apple doesn’t offer as much privacy as Linux, effectively it’s probably better because I don’t don’t have to do anything to set it up. And Google is essentially anti-privacy. And I get OS updates immediately, which I never got with Android (I wasn’t using a Pixel phone so maybe it’s different with those). And I haven’t experienced any real bugs with my Apple devices. I experienced some with my last android phone plus a general feeling that everything is kinda all over the place in terms of settings and functionality. And a feeling that Google was watching everything I was doing.
But this is just my feelings on it and I’m not interested in trying to change people’s minds. Other people are certainly entitled to their own views. Although I wish my dad (almost 80) would use an iPhone because he gets really confused with his Android phone, but he’s still mad at them for driving Commodore out of business.