That strategy will last ~15 minutes until Google is doing the same thing.

Then what? I would argue that what Google is doing already is way more privacy-compromising than this.

Google couldn’t do it, not effectively anyway because android vendors and variants are decentralised. They could do it for the pixels but that represents less thats half a percent of the market - not to mention that everyone on a pixel could just move to lineageOS if they didn’t like it.

That freedom and decentralisation doesn’t exist on Apple (at least yet, maybe the DOJ or congress will regulate them).

There’s nothing OS specific here. Google Photos could ship this on any Android distribution, and they have a billion users.

That's a great argument for a Linux phone or de-googled Android build.

Then don't use Google products either (or don't use for photography). Seems obvious.

"Dumb" phones and "dumb" cameras still exist.

That is not practical for many people who wish to be a part of society anymore. See: rollout of virtual vaccine passports, etc.

You can get a physical one by printing out a QR code, afaik.

Virtual vaccine passports will be forgotten long before they affect even a small fraction of people on this planet.