If you don't want Steam, don't use games that require it. If you don't want Google services like Google's Maps widget or its push messaging service or its game leaderboard, use apps that use another data source for maps and another persistent connection for push messages and another leaderboard service.
F-Droid and Amazon's App Store are filled entirely with apps that don't (can't) use Google's services, yet many on HN blindly continue to claim that this is not possible.
AOSP may not be as fully featured as it could be, but it's clearly quite possible to use Android without Google.
Making people implement their own services proved to be problematic, because most developers didn't care enough to optimize their services for low memory and battery usage, resulting in terrible battery life on Android devices. Since Android must compete against iOS, a central system had to be established to reach similar battery life.
That's kind of a cop-out though. It certainly could exist without Google's involvement if the location provider were a pluggable module within AOSP. microG does this - my phone supports the fused location API using Mozilla's location database instead of Google's. (There are other modules too, like a local database of cell towers if you're willing to dedicate some storage to it.)
Push notifications and Google login sure, but some of what's in the Play Services APIs should really be in AOSP, IMO.
EDIT: For that matter, you could even have the push provider available as a module too, even though Google's push service is the only one currently available.
But in general, I don't get what your expectation is, that Google will spend millions developing an OS and then give it to competition or deliberately provide worse user experience than their main competitor?
It's mostly not functionality missing to pass the CTS, but just broken untested AOSP-only code (that is replaced by Google closed source code in Google builds).
Also how do I turn off location tracking by Google, constantly asking me to upload pictures, write a review, answer questions ect
Does anyone know how to disable this?
As far as I know google can't link me to any data that maps sends.
Spotify works fine, along with a half dozen other apps.
Signal can a bit of a pain, as it complains about not having a google api backend, which I think is for contacts. Again, the pain is worth it. And there are open source contact alternatives.
I can't get apps that I paid for, for that I would have to sign in with Yalp, which I haven't bothered with. The freedom is so much better.
Everything else works, banking apps, Firefox, Dropbox, etc.
I'm using a Sony Xperia Z2. The battery is AMAZING! I really wish a largish company would pick this idea up, and start selling phones without google. Sony? The freedom and privacy is worth a lot in my opinion.
So yes, you can remove Google completely from your smartphone, but then many things are getting much more complicated. So I don't want to remove Google completely from my phone. I just want to have easy options to turn things off I do not like.
I just wish Google would respect their users wishes a little more and would keep developing their services in a direction which would embrace community contributions to the eco system.
This is not how things work in reality. People/corporations don't do what you want just because you're wishing it. If you are unwilling to tolerate a little bit of discomfort why should they tolerate the risk of changing their practices which have been proven to work? By continuing to buy Android devices, despite your complaints, you are, in fact, providing them with the opposite incentive.
You can switch off all the nags in there.