I think I can help provide some proof.

First - the article talks about the message delivery via push notification. The push notification is, essentially, a JSON object.

The relevant notification for push/delete would be something like:

  notificationType: 2
  docid {
    backendDocId: "com.zhiliaoapp.musically"
  }

Second - ADB itself, of course, provides a command for removal of an app. Only requirement would be permissions. If working direction with a console on target device, that command is going to look like this [1]:

  pm uninstall -k --user 0 [package name]

Third - Google playstore has the permissions required to read and write to the phones filesystem. I can't find this explicitly stated, but I'm sure someone else will link to some documentation showing this is true.

Fourth - Kinda makes everything else a moot point, google play apps are served by google clouds (the author mentions this as well), so even if google couldn't remove the app from the phone, it could essentially cut the cords to the APIs and render the app useless. [2]

1 - https://jimcofer.com/2019/02/18/uninstalling-android-apps-vi...

2 - https://developer.android.com/guide/playcore/dynamic-deliver...

Final thoughts: The author touches on this, but I don't think anyone really knows the answer. Google can remove TikTok, but will they (they haven't yet, right? lol)?

EDIT: formatting and final thought