Ugh... between the Galaxy Z Fold 4 and the Pixel Fold, if I had $1800 in discretionary funds, I'd take the Pixel Fold without hesitation for so many reasons despite the latter being a '1st gen' product. But with the Z Fold 4 selling for as little as
$1350 without activation, or even less with bloated trade-in values, it's tough to justify the 33% higher effective price.
Smart tactic by Samsung. They know that while their brand recognition and retention will provide a lot of defense, this is the first US foldable competitor and it gets a lot of things done better in a way consumers will care about (since most consumers don't really care about intangible specs). And they know Google won't do any real discounting for quite a while.
If Google really wanted to take the battle to Samsung (which they do and don't, I'm sure), they'd offer a massive trade-in specifically for owners of Samsung foldables.