ADB is your friend. Uninstall any app you don’t need/want.

You can remove them. Tap the sticker icon on the right side of the text entry field (bottom of the screen). Scroll the bottom stickers’ bar to the right until you see the “+”. Tap it, et voila - you can remove them.

I wouldn’t be surprised if that would be exactly what they do.

I’ve read somewhere that once Gmail address is created, it is not reused - even when account is deleted.

Good to know. However, Brave image search forwards the user to either google or bing results.

Good to know. However, Brave image search forwards the user to either google or bing results.

One of the first things I do on a new phone is I uninstall the Google app (ADB) but I do it only for my user (me). So it is unavailable to me, and it doesn’t run in the background. I think I could uninstall it completely and nothing would break. Some things rely on it - the podcast app did (a while ago), google translate (when I try to translate a photo).

However, I am actively eliminating google from my life. No Drive, no Photos, Gmail is what I use when I want to subscribe to some crappy service (I moved to Tutanota, and I’m a paid user). I don’t use Google search (I do a mix of DuckSuckGo and Brave search - which both use Bing ¯_(ツ)_/¯ ; I’m thinking of moving to one of paid search providers).