The /e/os distribution bundles MicroG, which Lineage has flatly refused to consider.
MicroG pretends to be Google Mobile Services, allowing more apps to run. It requires signature-spoofing, which is a major architectural change to Android.
There is absolutely no reassurance of any privacy any more. Several VPN providers have been caught for leaking data to corporations over time as well. There are too many points where any software can be compromised, e.g. the APIs and libraries required by any application, to ensure proper privacy.
It's wiretapping conducted on everyone using devices they purchased by private companies (that uphold no responsibility for proper use or securing the data) without any justifiable cause... God help you these days if you do warrant a wire tap, but at least the Government is usually a bit more secure and regulated concerning storage and use of that data.
You can use Google to push targeted messaging to people based on the dossiers you collect.
They don’t sell the dossier, but they can leverage it. In many cases they can make inferences without the dossier. For example, you can target anti-opioid or anti-extremist materials at people identified as risks.
For example, you can target every pregnant woman in a geography and score her risk of giving birth to a child with an opioid addiction. That child will cost a health insurer ~$2M, so targeted ads that convert to intervention are very high value.
Where it gets weird is you can reverse engineer the dossier at scale. You can target very specific conditions without google “selling” that data to you. If you’re a 50 year old male searching for divorce attorneys who moved 6 times, the context of searching for “pain killers” or “target range” may have a different context than if you’re an 18 year old athlete booking a cabin in rural Maine.
I thought the context (parent comment) was enough. Parent is concerned to the point of leaving the phone before going to the doctor. It is well-known that Android (the non-de-Googled version) actively tracks your location [1].
Edit: why the downvotes? It is a valid question.