I would prefer that Alphabet keep Android open, but honestly, how can anybody be surprised? Eventually Google is going to tighten the screws on Android. I haven't looked into it, but hopefully there are some truly free options out there. Graphene?
I install my OS and gui with system packages (minimal setup mostly) and everything else with flatpaks. It's not perfect. There's bloat and cleanup evolved, and some packages I didn't trust. And sometimes you still need to build an app from source. But it fixed a bunch of issues you mentioned. It's also nice to limit permissions on apps.
So he started a war to help drive renewables? 🤔