It’s not neccessarily about being unique, but also serving as a reference.
Microsoft introduced the Surface line in 2012, same year as windows 8 that had a new UI designed to be used with a touch screen. They’ve also released devices with ARM processors to bring windows into that space, presumably with the idea that others might follow. But those attempts so far have failed. Probably due to simply not having any great SoCs available like the Apple with the M1.
You do have a good point with the Pixel exclusive features.
Isn’t longer software support actually something that might decrease hardware sales, rather than increase them? Considering it might lead to people using their device for longer. That said i think it is partially to avoid bad optics compared to apple and some of the android manufacturers like samsung. This also seems like a point where the pixel line might try to set an example for more to follow. It might have benefits for google, if more phones are consistently running the newest version.
I wonder if they’d develop a SoC themself, if there were a great mobile SoC on the market with dedicated hardware for ai/machine learning. Apple has with the neural engine in their chips, but that obviously isn’t for sale. Google, like many others, is rolling out products that might make use of it, so it is definitely desirable to have. And Google is actually in a good position to develop it, since they didn’t start from scratch designing chips, but have done so for a while with the TPUs for their data centers (where they do care about hardware). So this might be aimed at leading the market due to neccessity, since outside of apple others might not have the hardware ready for when the software/service side might need it.