Turns out the fabled year was 202X all along.

I'll admit, I'm delighted to see HP announce this, if only because it means System76 will (probably) get more funding for Pop_OS and that this may "legitimize" the Linux Desktop more with three major manufacturers carrying supported options.

Late but absolutely agreed. I fun an Oryx Pro and while I don’t use PopOS, all their hard work is on display constantly — their improvements there bleed over to other distros so easily (they’ve struck a great balance between releasing compatible stuff but staying sane and not exponentially increasing their support burden)

The weird thing is that HP undermines their effort a bit by they doing the consumer bloatware thing where they 'load it up with stuff for you to do your job' according to their marketing material.

Are you referring to the laptop in this announcement? If so, I can't find anything suggesting that there's anything installed by default other than Pop_OS.

Yes. Click on the linked site and scroll down to the third row.

somewhere, someone must want this bloatware - otherwise it would have had to die out at some point. Although I'd be hard pressed to find this person.

The bloatware vendors pay them to include it.