[HunOL]

It's not breaking free from Google, but pretending it does not affect you. You are still at mercy of app developers and Google which may introduce some changes that will affect you. Additionally you never know what will work or stop working.

[Tepix]

If something truly unacceptable happens, you still have a while to switch to something else, in the meantime you will still have a working system.

[_heimdall]

That's pretty unavoidable at that level unless you are able and willing to build your own phone hardware, OS, and all the apps you need.

[timbit42]

They are working with a partner to create their one phone hardware.