Google Pixel hardware is focused on providing a private relationship between the user (your data and behavioral patterns) and Google.
Depending on your threat model you can flash custom roms to enhance your privacy and security posture.
A lot of folks here seem to be of the "...just flash GrapheneOS and you're good..." crowd but it's not that simple and there are trade-offs that impact usability and user experience.
There are a lot of interesting projects out there to choose from. Best advice is to work-up your real world threat model and do your reasearch.
Yeah the developer is very dramatic, but the project itself is still amazing. He did step down from lead, but the dude is a genius programmer. I'm still very confident on having it on my phone. I was using CalyxOS before, which I really like, but the sandboxed play services were a really killer feature for me on GrapheneOS.