Publishing on the play store now requires giving out personal identity documents (like drivers license or passport), full legal name/phone number/email/tax ID/etc., as well as your private signing keys.
I am not an android developer, and privacy wise I don't try to put the toothpaste back into the tube. I would have been fine with everything except the last one. What happens when there is a data breach on Google?
I'm surprised this wasn't already the case. You're distributing potentially malicious code to users' devices, and they expect a base level of safety from the Play Store. You're free to publish elsewhere, so it's not like Apple's policy.
You're not a developer, you're a company, even if you're doing business as an individual.
The signing key requirement has pros and cons. Cons being that Google can now impersonate developers and inject code at will. This seems somewhat irrelevant in face of the control they already exert through Google Play Services, but it's obviously bad nonetheless.
Pros being that Google can now keep the signing key secure behind a Google sign-in instead of relying on individual developers to maintain good opsec.