Now with Aurora store out of the picture it seems there is no real alternative to using the Google Play store for apps that cant be downloaded directly or via Fdroid.
But how bad is it actually to use Play store? I never used it before on my current phone, its no problem to create a dummy google account and the apps I need is free so no credit card needs to be registered. But what info will they actually get from my device ? Will they pull my phone number and whatnot ?
Aurora is still working. Google was doing things like rate-limiting and shutting down the accounts used by Aurora for anonymised downloads. You can create your own google account and use that with Aurora. That way, if Google decides to shut down that throw-away account for some reason, the main Google account won’t be affected (there was some information floating around that google had been deactivating accounts found to be used with Aurora).