Thanks for asking this question.
I fight Google tooth and nail, also, but I avoid those apps that require giving Google personal information about me. (I don’t do banking, medical stuff, or other sensitive operations on any phone; I reserve that for a computer where I have greater control of what happens in my browser and on my network.)
But to your broader question, “Is Google unavoidable?” Yes, I think that’s true these days, sadly:
- Google tracking, analytics, and/or (re)CAPTCHA/gatekeeping have been embedded into nearly every website, even the most sensitive ones, like banking and healthcare websites, where you would think your privacy would be more protected.
- Google is the dominant search engine (probably its primary data collection mechanism); in fact, “searching” became normalized as “Googling” in the vernacular many years ago.
- Google dominates the browser market share, and therefore has undue influence over how all browsers work (and collect personal data).
- Google controls much of the world’s email; sometimes it arrives on your devices as “gmail,” and sometimes it’s rebranded and masked behind some other business or personal domain.
- Google created its own MVNO: Google Fi. What data does it collect from its millions of users?
- Google controls a large chunk of internet infrastructure: cables, servers, routing, etc.
- Google controls most of the world’s smartphone market… and personal data harvesting.
- Google is used extensively for DNS lookup, and is usually the default in electronics (streaming boxes, “smart” TVs, etc.)
- Google’s “Safebrowsing” is used in most, if not all, web browsers.
- Google pays to be set as the default search engine in most browsers.
- Google dominates in digital mapping and navigation…and tracking of your location and movement.
- Google has captured and made public a photograph of your home and its precise location, and probably most homes in most of the world. (At one time, the collection vehicles also captured your home wifi network name and particulars in the process.)
- Google controls most of the video that users generate on the internet, and tracks users and those who view the content.
- Google is now embedded in cars’ digital systems.
- Google is in residential audio/video-capture devices, not just inside homes, but outside, on the front door, pointing at the general public.
- Google tracking is present in almost every commercial Android app, and probably every commercial iOS app; every business that publishes its own app directs you to Google or Apple to install their app (tracking by Google included).
- Google has convinced a large part of the world’s population that they are synonymous with “security” on the internet, while deflecting attention from their privacy-abusing practices.
- When it comes to phones and operating systems, bloggers and journalists continually downplay protecting your own privacy from Google, and instead focus on “handicapped” functionality of degoogled devices, and the “danger” of using alternate app stores like open-source (privacy-respecting) F-Droid.
There’s no doubt much more that Google is doing that should cause concern. (I edited that last sentence for clarity.)