I use fdroid and aurora store for installing apps, and push notifications work nicely using microg. Of course microg needs to connect to G servers (no way around it), but at least it works and there is no G app running on the phone.
I might be misunderstanding it, but microg is not (like the name suggests) a stripped down version of the google services. It is a reimplementation of the APIs that the google services provide to installed apps. It doesn't reuse any code (it couldn't, because the google services are not open source) and doesn't connect to google servers, afaik.
It's not possible to do push notifications for proprietary apps without making some requests to Google. The location services of microG support other providers and don't use Google. microG even replaces the Google map some apps integrate with another provider, at least it did a few years ago.
MicroG still talks to Google services. It takes their code off your device but doesn't relieve you of the primary issue, that everything is dependent on Google's cloud services to work, and that they can still track everything you sent to them.
MicroG is not an OS, but open source reimplementation of Google APIs and make usage of Google backend optional when possible (e.g push notifications). So unless Google going to drop support for all older Android versions in Maps it's all going to be alright.
microG also reimplements the Google Maps APIs (using OpenStreetMaps) and the Location APIs (with different backends, like Mozilla Location Services or a local offline database). The main Google-based service is Google Cloud Messaging, which is disabled by default in microG.
As you can see, microG doesn't strictly depends on the Google cloud services.
I'm very aware of microG. They have done some amazing work. But unfortunately apps like banking apps require that you pass Google's SafetyNet. Which (understandably) is a lot more complicated to support in microG.
microG still sends data to Google though, I believe, even though the local code is open. Without Google involved at all, Android is barely usable as a daily driver. I tried for a while.
>MicroG allows you to run apps that depend on Google's APIs without installing Google Play. Do note that compatibility is not perfect, though it works well for most use cases.
I'm having a great experience using microG, which lets me selectively enable and disable cloud messaging for every app that attempts to use Google Play Services. microG does not implement the ads and tracking (Google Analytics) APIs of Google Play Services. microG also lets me use Mozilla Location Services to replace Google Location Services, which obtains a location much faster than GPS alone. With microG being free and open source, I trust it much more than the proprietary Google Play Services, even with sandboxing applied.
It's weird that the article doesn't mention microG even once, since it's what /e/ uses instead of the Google Play Services client.
I looked at MicroG and saw this almost immediately: This is alpha-grade software and not yet ready for production use. Do not use if you don't know what you're doing.
That's not going to be good enough for Huawei.
Similarly, all of those alternative OSes aren't going to work if they're not binary, and more importantly API compatible with Android + GMS.
IIRC, it uses microG to emulate some Google services so that you can have push notifications without installing the play store. Otherwise, you have to go without for some things.
Also IIRC, microG requires you to allow signature spoofing, which has always creeped me out a tiny bit. I don't understand android well enough to fully understand the possible risks of that.
It seems to miss my favourite with Lineage - microG enabled, but C2DM disabled, i.e. services present, but no talking to google servers (but maps api, locations and so on still work).
I ran MicroG recently and for many cases it works but there are still places where it's lacking. For example it doesn't play nice with taxi apps. Notifications and such work just fine though, as does Google's own Play Store.
I think shipping microG by default is a fine choice nowadays. In default setup, it doesn't connect to Google servers at all (/e/ might have different configuration though), but it enables maps and geolocation in apps (using different APIs, not Google). It is also relatively small (4 MB should not be a problem on most devices). That said, I think a no-gapps build would be nice to have, too.
(I use LineageOS as well, though. It works with microG too, but you need to get a build from here instead of the official one: https://lineage.microg.org/)
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