anbox-playstore-installer VS GmsCore

I have not done this, but I gather than installation of microG, GApps and the Google Play Store in Anbox is possible: https://github.com/geeks-r-us/anbox-playstore-installer

Is anyone here daily-driving microg and can share their experiences? https://github.com/microg/GmsCore/wiki/Implementation-Status does not exactly inspire confidence.

microG itself connects directly to Google: https://github.com/microg/GmsCore/wiki/Google-Network-Connec...

No shit, of course they do.

>In general, we obviously try to minimize the connections to Google, but some services strictly rely on them and would just not work without.

What exactly do you think they should do instead?

Yes, the Xposed module is one way. There are also other ways

Google Play Services implements a lot of increasingly vital features and interfaces on Android. Not having it kills a good number of things people consider important, like push notifications (some apps are designed to still send push notifications like Signal, but it's kind of a hack and does drain the battery). If you're looking for almost the same functionality without google play services, MicroG[1] is an open source implementation of Google Play Services and its' associated components. I don't think it works on GrapheneOS unfortunately, but GrapheneOS already sandboxes all the Google Play Services components, so you should be fine as is. "Normal"/stock Android roms aren't set up the same way however, so you pretty much need either Google Play Services or MicroG for push notifications, location services, etc.

[1] - https://microg.org/

Except /e/OS then throws that out the window because it installs and enables microG by default which immediately connects directly to Google: https://github.com/microg/GmsCore/wiki/Google-Network-Connec...

#1: Google began deleting accounts that use Aurora Store #2: MicroG 0.2.26.223616 released | 0 comments #3: microG + SafetyNet on LineageOS [Guide]

It may work but won't out of the box. r/microg will be your friend with that. https://github.com/microg/GmsCore/wiki/Implementation-Status

I don't know, Marvin isn't always very communicative, but keep in mind that every additional feature means additional work and additional bugs, and Marvin doesn't see to have too much time on his hands to work on MicroG (although it's nice that he seems to have been getting some help lately). Your best bet to obtain what you ask for would be to open an issue for a feature request here; however, there is already a similar request here (so I wouldn't open another) and you can see how it's panning out.