with the recent news about the things that were said about Google slowing down Firefox on purpose, are they doing this because they severily dislike Firefox/open source? :c If so, that wouldn’t make a lot of sense!!! Because Google loves open source too. I read they were doing this to stop adblockers, and well if you use Firefox without those, it can work maybe! I use Chromium and Google Chrome on Ubuntu u
But AOSP already is “Android without proprietary Google code”, simply because “Android” means AOSP + Google Play Services + compatibility certification. It’s getting increasingly more and more barebones as Google moves functionality into Google Play Services, but it is what the vast majority of third party ROMs are based on.
How they manage to then improve compatibility differs. Truly ungoogled ROMs just don’t - either the app works with AOSP, or it’s not welcome on the system because it would require Google services. Some use MicroG, a small open-source reimplementation that is good enough to replace the real Google Play Services for most apps (but it does communicate with Google servers similarly to the real one, so all it does from degoogling perspective is limit the amount of extra data your phone sends to Google). Then there are also ROMs that support installing the official Google Play Services and related apps. LineageOS can do that (or it can use MicroG, or just not have GPS at all), for example.
And then there is GrapheneOS which has managed to turn the Play Services into a mostly regular app that doesn’t have overreaching access to the whole system and lets you configure how much data you’re willing to leak to it.
Drivers also don’t seem to be that big of a deal nowadays, Google’s effort to simplify Android updates for OEMs has done a lot to help third party ROMs as a side effect. The biggest problem now is the various security attestation mechanisms that are available through Google Play and which Google spends a lot of time and money to convince developers to use. These are very hard / currently impossible to implement in a way that doesn’t trip security checks on the affected apps - want mobile banking? Well, that’s too bad because it will simply refuse to work if Google Play says your system has been tampered with. Workarounds exist, but they’re not reliable over time.
OK, I admit, I was looking into this a few years ago, so I don’t have the lastest info on this. Back then, drivers were the biggest problem. I had an Asus ZenFone 3 Max back then and I really wanted to try and run LineageOS on it. Turns out, everything works 🥳, except for RIL 😒. I could live without bluetooth or IR, that’s fine, but… this is a phone, it’s primary purpose is to make phone calls, not be a tablet. Hell, I could buy a $50 one if I really wanted a tablet.
My point is, there will always be obsticles and ways to overcome them. The only question is, is it worth my time and effort. A thing like ReVanced that takes 2 minutes to install, yeah, sure. But me doing backflips once every 2 or 3 months to overcome paying for things, nah, that’s just not worth it.
I stand behind this, there is no point in forking Android, you gain nothing. Simple apps that don’t need anything to run, yeah, those will run just fine, but as you mentioned, anything that involves data transfer to google services will be a hard to swallow pill. It’s just not worth it IMO. Better invest your time in a new platform. Sure it’s gonna be hard for it to take off, but hey, at least you’re not investing your time in a lost battle.