That's not Android.

Let me repeat the question — how does Android track you?

That’s virtually every android device in existence. Just because someone degoogled an android once as an experiment doesn’t mean it becomes the new definition of what android is.

Dare I ask what the point is?

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I am not talking about de-Googled Android. Turning off web/app activity in your Google profile is not equivalent with de-Googling your Android.

I am asking how does Android, Google's Android distribution not anything else, tracks users?

And I am saying it is a pointless thought experiment to separate Google from Android. Next you’ll say it’s the hardware that is android, not the software and ask how the hardware directly tracks users.

Edit: Read my original comment again, you are changing the subject. I haven’t said anything remotely conspiratorial, Google is open about their tracking in android. My point is that Google tracks you on android and if you turn it off your phone becomes crippled and in many cases for no reason except that google wants to make it as painful as possible to turn off data collection. Data collection is their business model after all.

iOS too ships with Google as the default search engine and just like on iOS, you can pick a different default on Android too. In fact Android has always allowed for changing all meaningful defaults, not something you can say about iOS. And in fact the world's leading Android makers, like Samsung, all of them ship with different defaults except for the Search engine (we're talking browser, email application, etc).

And all desktops actually ship with a browser that default to a search engine that tracks your searches, including Microsoft's Edge and their integration with Bing Ads. And Google is in fact the most transparent about what they track.

So if your answer is the Google Profile, which is transparent and can be turned off, then it's a pretty shitty answer. Unless you can point to implementation details in Android proper, all of this is just a conspiracy theory, similar to anti-vaxxing.

This is such a user-hostile product choice. Google will happily let me favourite a place but refuse to create work and home labels.

I asked for evidence that Google tracks you in nefarious ways via Android.

Am I being tracked when using their DNS servers, which are otherwise very valuable for people suffering from DNS-level banning of websites?

And what do you mean by "privacy respecting"?

Words are cheap. I hope the privacy respecting apps and services you use can guarantee that either via technology (encryption, open source, reproducible builds), or via contract (and a ToS that can be changed on a whim for a free service isn't a contract that can protect you).

This is what the F-Droid repository is all about. But again, Google has insisted on changes to AOSP that will shortly make it much more difficult for ordinary users (i.e. those who cannot use the command line) to make use of such free and libre offerings.