Being open source is not the only benefit of MicroG. It massages some (many) of the queries, removing as many bits of identifying information as possible. It lets you replace Google Location services with BeaconDB. And some other stuff. These are all privacy wins. Practical ways to maintain as much of the functionality as possible, as much of the convenience, while minimizing the amount of information that is sent to Google (among others). They come with a compromise in security. So this comes down to threat modeling. To use the naming from privacyguides.org, is your model includes “surveillance capitalism” but not “targeted attacks” then MicroG might even be better. e/OS, while far from perfect, also adds a feature that blocks requests from tracking services using a blocklist. You can get that in 50 other ways, but this one does not drain my battery at 3x the speed, so I like it. I do not claim that /e/OS is “better” than GrapheneOS, just that other ROMs can be a very good choice, depending of the user. There is a reason why GrapheneOS is the golden standard, and if I were a journalist or activist in many parts of the world I would definitely stick to that and only that. But that is why threat modeling exists. My threat model allows me a little more latitude, so I am not restricted to buying Pixels in an era when Google seems to be slowly undermining GrapheneOS, and I can choose a different manufacturer with better ethics. Among other things.