Similar to how people that keep cars around for 10+ years are stuck with dated and worthless 'infotainment' systems, Google and Ecobee can't even honor their product for long enough to outlast the HVAC units.
What burns me is that it wouldn't be much of an ask for them to push one final (optional) update that would open LAN-only access to core functionality. I and many others in the HA/ESPHome community have written hardware integrations to devices over RS485/UART with unpublished/black-box protocols, so a simple HTTP API would have an integration within days.
It would maybe cost an engineer at Nest/Ecobee a day or two of work, and the goodwill would make me far more likely to purchase a newer model. As it is, I've committed to avoiding (where possible) devices that aren't local-first.