There have been plenty of cases like this over time too. Company makes controversial change. Company rolls it back after outrage. Company slowly shifts over time until they've restored what's essentially the original controversial change.

When a company tells you their intention by announcing a change, it's often a good idea to listen. Even if their PR department does some good cleanup work in the aftermath.

So what does it matter?

If they are going to make it not free, they can just remove it right before they make it not free.

If it was somehow a binding promise, then it doesn’t matter if they remove it or not, the promise was already made.

If it isn’t a binding promise, then it doesn’t matter if they remove it or not, the promise was not binding anyway.

I had checked as soon as I found out about the news the other day and it was there. I just checked on wayback machine and you're right, it was removed for some time. However, if they're willing to put back that claim immediately, I doubt that their intention was to drop the free plan anytime soon, but probably it was to incentivize people to use the paid plans. Enshittification must happen sooner or later afterall, but fortunately vaultwarden exists and the export feature is highly unlikely gonna be removed immediately as the free plan disappears, so people could just switch to a third-party or self-hosted backend as soon as that happens.