It wasn't high end when it was announced.
it actually was fairly high end when it was announced. it was on par with the Droid Incredible. or basically, it was a Droid Incredible, but with a slide out keyboard (with arguably one of the best keyboards btw). so everyone wanted it.
but after being delayed a million times, disappearing, then reappearing, when the Merge finally got on track to be released, it was during the time of the HTC thunderbolt, 4G LTE, and insane rumors of the Droid Bionic. so by this time, no one really cared, since the merge was old news, didn't have 4G LTE, old processor, and no front camera. those few things killed the appeal.
but anyway, to get back to the reference to the merge, yes...we saw cases of the merge appear online, but no site of the actual phone. obviously, this won't be happening with the galaxy nexus, since we know the g-nex is actually going to be released by Verizon. whereas, with the Merge, we didn't even know if Verizon was going to be carrying the phone or not.