If you can debug the device remotely, you can debug the device remotely without trusting a third party.

There's absolutely no reason your private home router should be a slave to whatever remote configuration, monitoring, or intercept that some third party may be under legal orders to implement.

IMO these devices are nothing but parasites. On the positive side, Google has no track record with selling this kind of device and hopefully they will fail badly at it.

Google Fiber is one of the most wanted things in the tech world. You think having your traffic go through their router is bad? I don't even want to know how you'd feel about every internet thing you do being on their network.

There is a significant difference between being the first hop after the firewall, and the firewall actual.

I'd say Google has done amazingly well with selling at least one device like this, the Chromecast.

Maybe I'm over-stating the similarities, or the actual success.