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Yup, I am quite annoyed too with this practice. I have had 3 pixel phones and first thing i do is to unlock and flash calyxos or graphene. Since I always purchase used phones only, I just make it a practice to buy them in cash and unlock at a public WiFi.

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I just got myself an old used Pixel phone as a daily driver, and I intend someday to flash it with a lineageOS. It already was somewhat tricky for me, at my skill level, to successfully do this on "ordinary" devices (Nexus 7 and Pixel C tablet), and it seems like getting the Pixel to truly unlock is going to be an added layer of complexity.

Not sure if there is an equivalent for LineageOS but GrapheneOS offers an almost completely automated flashing process in Chrome via WebUSB and gives instructions for the actions you need to take on the phone itself when necessary throughout the process (on my Pixel 4a I just needed to press volume up and power to unlock the bootloader when prompted by the installer).

The whole process was amazingly easy when I did it and took less than 15 minutes.

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