I thought the same thing. I owned a Lenovo tablet with some gimmicky speaker that I never used.
However, I bought the Pixel tablet and I'm actually enjoying this speaker. It's useful as a desk stand, sounds alright, it's super easy to pop the tablet on there for charging, the transition between speaker to tablet sound when you grab it works flawlessly.
Sure, it's superlative for some people, but it's actually not a bad addition. I use it every day to watch YouTube or listen to music while I work.
I’m assuming it’s somewhat of a chicken and egg combined with googles inability to invest in growing products. No one makes good android tablet apps, so there’s a no reason to make android tablets, so there’s no reason to invest in android tablet apps.