The title is misleading. Article says, currently location sharing is a Google Maps feature and it will become a Google Play Services feature, not an Android feature.
Google Play Services is NOT the only way you can use Android.
Please correct me if I’m wrong I haven’t used Google Maps nor Play Services for years. MicroG is good enough for me.
Technically misleading but realistically the only population it’ll affect are the Chinese who I believe don’t have GMS. Non GMS users outside China probably aren’t even a blip on their radar.
Also, how would location sharing work without a server anyway? And I very much doubt that Google would open source the server side implementation coz that’s how companies roll nowadays…
Yes, the overlap between privacy conscious people and deliberately non GMS users are very big.
I read the article because I was interested how they would do it, and how I can disable it. I was just disappointed, that there is no magic, just lazy tech writers are mixing up different things again.