[michaelmrose]

You can have access to the google play store and browse with firefox, use fastmail for email, use maps.me for maps, and text messaging + a million and one different messaging apps.

Then google knows what? That you installed fastmail, firefox, and maps.me?

[solarkraft]

If you have Google Play Services embedded into your system and you use Google Play: Yes. You have a good chance of avoiding that by downloading through Aurora, though.