Me too. I was posting it as a positive, not a negative. If memory serves me correctly, my current GN2 had about 10.5 GB free at the start. That means the new phone is only taking about 2.5GB more. If Verizon puts about the same amount of bloatware on their variant, I'll still have an extra 13 GB. I can totally live with that.
I had these visions of the new phones using half the available storage for new "essential" functionality. Glad to know I was probably just being paranoid.