If one despises Google, buying a Google phone would be the least optimal solution.
The extremely deep integration with google services was always annoying for me. I'm still finding it hard to untangle myself now that I've fully moved to Apple devices.
My older smartphone (few years old) had less Google-related stuff. And for one, it had its own goddamn music player. Can you imagine? I did not have to use Google Play by default, and go to the Play Store to download a fscking music player. A music player!
It doesn't matter so much now, but I don't want them cluttering up my phone's rom with default apps I might not like, or that I can't take with me to a new phone. An ideal Android for me would come out of the box with a dialer (preferably AOSP), clock, keyboard, launcher, AOSP Browser, and a play store stub (play store might not be ideal, but it's the path of least effort).
Yeah, of course. It is a sad state of the store that I had to go through a few music players before I found one that did not shove ads in my face (or at all), and had all the basic functions you would expect a music player to have.
Google Play Music graduated Google anyway, and is going to be killed soon...