It's a byproduct of the home and task switch button now being managed by the Pixel Launcher regardless of which launcher you use. The animation delay makes it so the button becomes inactive and won't be made active again until the Pixel Launcher is killed or the phone restarted.
From my perspective, Google is losing interest in maintaining Android at all.
I remember that being a super annoying problem, and then it went away. I haven't thought about that issue in years. Maybe it only happened on my old 4a.
Google is losing interest in maintaining Android at all.
Google is just starting to capitalize big on Android with its strangle hold. They've recently introduced tracking your device while it's off. Scoped storage, where it excludes itself. Stock Pixel devices cannot use other gallery apps to view their images. Google requires developers to submit their key to sign their apps for Google Play Store. Google has copied almost all popular productivity apps to push their own above everyone else. And so on and so on.
Their AI stuff is probably analyzing your data on-device and sending aggregate to their servers. Which they can conflate and market as "not sending your data" but it just means not sending the raw data.
So I really doubt they're losing interest in Android.
They're certainly losing interest in maintaining core Android, which is closer to what I meant. Everything you've described is within their Play Services environment.
Some of what you've said is incorrect as well - I have a third party gallery that works just fine on my stock Pixel 8 Pro. Its access is just managed by a separate permission.