Yeah, my wife’s Pixel 3 came with unlimited photo storage too. It was a selling point… of course, that went away when it became inconvenient for Google.
I was also burned, in my case by the "free forever" or something "high quality photo storage" (as opposed to full quality).
I understand nothing is truly free, but I expect when a large scale company offers something for free they have thought it true and aren't planning from the start to weasel out once you have uploaded a few thousand images using their solution?
Well, I have learned my lessons:
I don't trust Google anymore.
As some said it took a while to stop trusting Google because they had to burn through a mountain of goodwill, but here we are.
I understand your frustration, but this was communicated by Google already at launch.