It was available and I think I managed to get one. I have yet to receive an email confirmation, but it shows up in my list of past purchases from Play. I bought it around 8:40 PST.
Same for me. My order is timestamped at 8:50 PST.
it was. I was able to add it to my shopping cart, but kept getting errors when pressing a 'proceed' button. Others succeeded though.
I saw the buy option once but when I selected the 16 gb model it disappeared again. Disappointed.