Yeah, I found that comment to be unhelpful. But there are hard questions here, and merely dropping Google components doesn't really provide satisfying answers.

Yeah, I found that comment to be unhelpful. But there are hard questions here, and merely dropping Google components doesn't really provide satisfying answers. A "phone" needs to facilitate communicating with others. A "smart phone" should run apps many of which do at least some communication with various web services. If the whole system around your phone isn't trying to preserve your privacy, can your phone's OS really protect it? If you lock down stuff to the point where you are confident you're not leaking a trail of potentially identifying info, how useful is the phone?