The article isn’t talking about Apple or Google adding privacy-invasive stuff. It's talking about protections being put in place To prevent you from being tracked by things like Apple’s Airtags
The google service that is being used for the airtag alert is one of the main ones google uses to track you. Many privacy conscious individuals have disabled this service.
Now the choice is
A) disable service to prevent google from spying on you, but risk being tracked by an airtag.
B) keep the service to prevent being tracked by an airtag, but also allow google to spy on you.
GSF is where most of Google's invasive user tracking happens. It's proprietary, closed source and is not part of AOSP (Android Open Source Project). It is, by definition, spyware.