I am a bit confused by this, as a user I go directly to wordpress.org/plugins when searching, I don’t know what those on wordpress.com do. When I was using wordpress.com, no plugins were allowed, but I realize that that has changed for at least some .com sites.

Certainly the lack of data for plug-in developers is a problem, and .com vs .org counts should be part of the missing data needing to be restored, I would think.