Exactly this. I'm not sure how wanting a device that can connect only as per my requests/configuration requires that I instead be OK with it willy-nilly connecting to whatever it wants.

See https://grapheneos.org/faq#default-connections which is an accurate list of the default connections in the OS. There are no connections to Google made by default. We offer the option (opt-in) to use their connectivity servers instead of ours, contrary to what the person you're talking about has claimed here. They have made false claims about connectivity checks, DNS, SUPL, WebRTC and other things. They have made false claims about what the project provides, what it aims to provide and what it's focused on. It's very clear that they are not acting in good faith and intend to cause harm to it by spreading misinformation. It's quite possible they hold a grudge due to being banned from the channel in the past, which is quite possible, since that kind of behavior would have resulted in a ban.

There are some legacy sample apps such as QuickSearchBox (a barebones search app using Google search) which we have listed in our issue tracker as things we need to replace with other apps. Those aren't part of the base OS and exist for testing the OS rather than real world usage. They need to be replaced rather than removed because the functionality will need to be included for compatibility. None of those apps make connections to Google simply by existing or from the user opening them, etc.

Using grep to search for Google domains and URLs across a huge source tree with more purposes than building the OS is not a viable way to identify connections that are made by the OS. A huge portion of that code is not used for the OS. A substantial portion consists of tests, sample code and code for other things like the SDK. A major portion is vendored external code (external/) where a small subset that's relevant is being used. For portions that are included, just because it implements functionality does not mean we are including the functionality or enabling it in the build configuration.