I don't think Google should be changing Android this way at all, and fear that it will later be used for evil. That said, I thought of an improvement:

Allow a toggle with no waiting period during initial device setup. The user is almost certainly not being guided by a scammer when they're first setting up their device, so this addresses the concern Google claims is driving the verification requirement. I'll be pretty angry if I have to wait a day to install F-Droid and finish setting up a new phone.

Evil, for the record would mean blocking developers of things that do not act against the user's wishes, but might offend governments or interfere with Google's business model, like the article's example of an alternative YouTube client that bypasses Google’s ads. Youtube is within its rights to try to block such clients, but preventing my device from installing them when that's what I want to do is itself a malicious act.