I am guessing it's about the desire to offer a higher standard of stuff to paid customers (since they may be expecting such and paying for it.)

Bard is completely beta and a raw one at that, not something I'd want confused for a part of a paid offering at this stage.

I get your point as well - I think there's a tension between the two options.

I’m using a paid Google account and had no problem; I suspect your problem is you are using their conservative business paid offering (Workspace) instead of their consumer paid offering (One) where products don’t need to be proven or have a clear place in their selling-to-business portfolio before they are integrated.

Your paid account has an agreement not to use your data to improve the service for others. This is an experiment the purpose of which is to collect usage data to improve the service. What's confusing about that?