Ehhhh… sorta maybe. Ultimately they can’t, but they can make development more difficult.

Also Google has nothing to do with whether or not you’re bootloader is unlockable. Get a phone that is.

If you rally want to go down the whole FOSS path it does ultimately become a bit of a lifestyle.

Just use a custom ROM. This sadly will affect app developers. But if you are on a custom ROM without GMS it will continue to work just fine.

What am I not seeing? How does this improve datamining capabilities?

The issue isn’t that. It’s that devs may juat abandon projects if they’re too naughty for Google cos the custom ROM crowd is so tiny.

Right so think torrent clients, idk, Pornhub app, that sort of thing. Yeah, it doesn’t affect your phone. But it absolutely will affect what software is available at all should Google clamp down on this.

Didn’t swiftpad or whatever its called send every key pressed to Microsoft?

Not a China shill. China is horrible. Microsoft less so as they don’t commit genocide in slow motion. But still, I think this sort of thing is more common than we think.

Use FOSS.