Anyone know if you can still get a high quality Android experience without being a slave to Google? Obviously things like Google Now are only particularly useful if you submit to Google, but other than that, what can be expected? Can I root it and disable all the bullshit?

I've run CopperheadOS a while ago (https://copperhead.co/android/) and in my opinion it's only gotten worse. As someone else mentioned; the "Google Play Services" are an essential part of apps these days. So expect any "mainstream" app not to work. You're forced to use open source alternatives from F-Droid (https://f-droid.org/en/)

Yes it's possible, but i wouldn't call it a "high quality android experience"

Of course it's entirely possible, depending upon your use-cases. If you want to use your phone as a communication, navigation and browsing device then there is no need to touch Google. You can disable Play, Maps, Chrome, Drive etc and install alternatives. Even WhatsApp offer a direct APK download, I wish more vendors did.

But if you want to play the latest games , install your bank's app or use voice agent then you'll need Google Play and an account.

For a while I tried using a blackberry that had android app support. One of the caveats was that the android support had no Google services support which rendered many apps unsable (including apps like Lyft that required Google maps).

I can’t imagine it’s gotten any better.

Sure you can. There are plenty of solutions for exactly that for several years now

I do pay for a Google business account, so that probably biases me in favor of connecting to their services. I use it for the branded email.