Nice development. Just yesterday I ordered a Pixel 6 to replace my ageing Ubuntu Phone — Google's Pixel smartphones are the only ones really well supported by privacy focussed Android forks like GrapheneOS and CalyxOS (I intend to install GrapheneOS on it). Currently, this seems like a decent middle ground between being able to run apps from one of the two app stores (Apple's and Google's) when needed without sacrificing too much control over your computing devices.
Having to buy the hardware from Google leaves a bit of bad aftertaste though. I really hope that in the future I can just get something like a Fairphone and be able to run a fully supported more user-aligned OS on it.