I am a total keyboard snob. I was in on the earliest Swype beta long before it was a public app, I've used SwiftKey on/off since its introduction as well. I currently have the KitKit apk running on my N7 and that is quite nice.
Although SwiftKey gets such love from so many users, I have always found it to be unacceptable. It's got the best prediction on the market, IMO, but as stated earlier, the lag makes the keyboard totally unusable, for me. If you have a document open in an app like OfficeSuite that's more than a page or two in length, you can do a handful of squat-thrusts in the time it'll take between a key tap and that letter displaying - seriously - it's that bad. This is well-documented all over their site and has persisted for years for a large number of users. Quite surprising for a leading keyboard app. On top of this, their swiping/flow functionality is too inaccurate for my use compared to the Google keyboard or Swype.
I find the stock G2 a delightful experience. My initial thought was that it's simply a piece of Manufacturer-supplied crapware that I'll replace in the first few minutes of use, but I gotta say that I love it for many of the reasons stated earlier in this thread. As of now, I have no intention of switching.