I always thought google looked at the whole site not just one page. I guess it makes perfect sense that squeeze pages don't rank to well - no content.
May be you are right, if we look at it from Google's view... It intends to deliver good user experience. Squeeze pages are annoying to user, they ask for personal information, which force user to leave the page.... this increases the bounce rate and pushes down the rankings. I think this is the reason why squeeze pages don't rank well.