Verizon doesn't want you to take the bloatware out.
I dont think bloatware has anything to do with this, as much as I believe that tethering is only a partial reason. The more I sit and think about people's responses, the more things jump out at me.
I always compare life in Android Land to a PC experience. Sure, microsoft isnt open source, but that aside there are a great many similarities. What do you get now, and for the last decade or more, on every store bought PC? Tons of manufacturer installed bloatware. Shareware games, built in services that are not on stock windows, etc. Just as HTC, Motorola and Samsung have their bloatware, so does every PC manufacturer (HP is the worst IMO). The product, being the software, is already sold before the computers/phones are physically in stores. You can remove the crappy PC stuff the second you get your computer, but I have never in my short time on earth heard of a company gripe about end users having that ability. Why would it be so different with smartphones?
Not to mention that P3 has not given any details about specifically WHY this is speculated to happen. It is the community who are branding themselves with the reasons: Tethering, removing bloatware, warranty abuse, god knows what else "could" be the reason.
I have a major question here, now that I brought up the PC and Android topic. Why do carriers have so much control over the end result of the phone, and why do cell phone manufacturers oblige by this? With a personal computer the only thing the manufacturer has to follow are Microsofts specifications: If it runs, and does the job, you can put it up for sale (not quite so easy, but bear with me. Im already typing a ton). I will link this issue to Google deciding to bring down the hammer on Carrier/Manufacturer decisions. Microsoft and Apple, much moreso Apple, have policies about how hardware and software are built into the machines, and because of this we dont see the horrible mix of user interfaces, unremoveable to the general user software, and the ensuing Root Community versus Carrier/Manufacturer war.
In short I believe that this move to stop rooters, is about money for sure. But the reason is deeper than petty bloatware or tethering. I will even go so far to say that warranty claims are not the big reason. Like others have said, this is about locking down everything, breaking the open source nature of android, and wanting to have the ability to charge for every little service possible.
