Those distributions either use neutered Google Play Services through a stub reimplementation (microG), or rely on sandboxing (GOS).

Either way, Google can only collect limited data on those distributions, and you have control over them. Concerning tracking applications, yes, some hygiene and good practices are necessary, the OS can only go so far.

A true depiction of someone who has no clue what he's talking about. Google play services are the major source of telemetry exfiltration from major android devices. It runs as a highly privileged process which can collect data in extremely intricate manner and is the main reason google sells it's gapps bundle to scamsung and other chinese phone manufacturers.

> go no proprietary apps (ie. most apps people actually use)

That is the whole point of my argument. You either make sacrifices and improve your privacy or be stubborn and refuse to improvise which a lot of people still do. If privacy were that convenient, we wouldn't be talking about it. It's not by default and never will be