I managed to degoogle stock ROM, as I wanted to have the glyphs available (I feel like I'm in a minority of users that find them useful as well as just cool).

I did have the phone enter crash dump and at points had no ROM or recovery and it took a while as I was endlessly searching tools available.

I'm more than happy to share what I did?

Word of warning is you need quite a few tools, apps and packages, but they have source code available.

I'm not a mobile developer but going through the tools they are regarded well in the developer community, or scanning the code myself didn't raise an alarms.

Afaik /e/OS isn't completely Google-free. It just uses some anonymization stuff to make Google services a bit less invasive and I think it has proprietary software too. For a complete Google-free experience you probably want something like LineageOS or GrapheneOS

if you want to degoogle the only way to run some apps without unprivileged code (GMS/microG) is to use grapheneos & its sandbox compatibility layer. this is unfortunately only available on the pixels.

I also worry you won't be able to use some of the customization options that the nothing phone 2 offers with its hardware when using a custom ROM. if thats something u care about.

I have the pixel 7a & have had essentialy no issues with anything for what that's worth.

Just be aware that everyone has a different idea of how much privacy they need and who/what from. Whilst it is absolutely true that there are more private custom ROMs available, that does not necessarily mean that /e/ is universally "bad for privacy". Depending on the extent to which you are attempting to deGoogle your life, it may be good enough.