It's not dependent on who you read. Selling single digit millions of phones is not impressive.

Apple sells 80M iPhones in a quarter. Samsung is estimating 20M per quarter for the S8.

The Pixel is insignificant in the larger market.

Yeah, the goodness or badness of those numbers really depends on what Google's intent is in selling them directly. Is it really trying to get into the business of selling phones for profit? If that's the primary goal, then 1-2mm is pretty 'meh' in terms of making a dent in the global high end phone market.

Without knowing what their intent is, the goodness or badness of it can only be speculation. Which won't stop people from stating either position as fact.