I go to the Google Play Store to check out the Pixel 3 every few days and it's always a few things that stop me from buying.
There's no SD card slot
Only 4 GB ram and some of that 4GB is reserved for the GPU
That notch
That price
Less features then my Note 9
No themes
Also, from what I understand, you can't remove that search bar just by deleting it like you can other widgets. First thing I do on any Android phone is to delete the search bar. On the Pixel, you have to use another launcher to get rid of the search bar.
It was removable when I last had a Google phone, the Nexus 4.
I could probably handle the price Ok if it wasn't for the other things in my list above.