Yes, the joke was that even though there are store alternatives, one of the most/first common things will be installing the play store as in...what happens in the Chinese phone ecosystem.

I guess most people here aren't aware that google-free android phones are already a common thing.

Reminds me of a situation where I had to do tech support for a pal who had bought a Chinese phone (later learned it was a Xiaomi device). Turns out for some reason the Chinese model didn't have Google play store pre-installed since it is useless in their home market. However to get around this restriction, you had to locate one of the system apps, then search for a specific app inside it that would then install the Google play store.

Also, unrelated but obligatory. Huawei after the Trump ban now offers a de-googled smartphone experience.

Most apps downloaded from Aurora Store will not work on Google-free Android versions, because mainstream apps on the Google Play Store tend to require Google Play Services for even basic functionality.

That's not exactly correct. There are FLOSS replacements for Play Services these days. See also:

https://microg.org/

I recently de-Googled both my phone and my wife's. Although we try to use FOSS apps as much as possible, there's still a handful of apps we've downloaded via Aurora, all have worked fine. Obviously YMMV but I don't think "most apps won't work" is true.

There is also microG which I think solves this issue. And I see it's even sponsored by /e/ Foundation https://microg.org/.