Everyone is quick to ascribe malice without understanding why changes are made. It's never done for the reasons you think. Without a formal relationship between Graphene and Pixel, things were operating out of luck. This is why the next target hardware is starting with a business relationship. Even desktop Linux is most successful when business relationship between a vendor and the distro maker. Everything else is ripe for random breakage in support.
It is not quick. Whatever goodwill google had, it is gone based on their actions alone. And this is beside the point, because, I am not judging on what they intended to do, but what their actions, including after intense community backlash, were. In other words, their intent is irrelevant given the circumstances. Their actions, however, even without intended malice, will cause tremendous damage all around.