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.

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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.

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.