Not sure if I understood your sentence about network connectivity and e.g. DNS, but to add: They are preconfigured to google in AOSP (hardcoded). It can be changed via settings and overlays, however leaves a bad taste.
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AOSP uses network-provided DNS by default, not Google DNS. It only has Google DNS as a fallback for nearly non-existent networks not providing DNS servers via DHCP. Not sure why that would leave a bad taste since it has to use something and the privacy policy isn't bad.
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It leaves a bad taste, as AOSP as an open source system shouldn't have one supplier hardcoded, even as a fallback. It means patching the original code to get rid of it. Hence this is stuck in most devices. For me it should be open/configurable.
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Not sure what this has to do with AOSP being open source, and you misrepresent this as hard-coded. AOSP uses the network-provided or configured DNS servers, not Google DNS. It only uses Google DNS if nothing else is provided. Don't misrepresent it as hard-coded to Google DNS.
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No code needs to be changed to alter the fallback either. It is a configuration option, not something hard-wired into the code:
github.com/GrapheneOS/pla
Trying to make drama and controversy out of nothing does nothing more than making you look desperate to find an issue with it.
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Both AOSP and GrapheneOS use the network-provided DNS. If a VPN is used, the VPN provides DNS. The user can choose the DNS-over-TLS server of their choice instead of using the network-provided DNS. The fallback exists for when there is no other DNS server available / configured.
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In practice, the fallback DNS server is never used, because networks provide DNS servers. It exists to handle the edge case of using a dynamic IP where the network does not provide DNS servers. This is permitted by the standards, but is not something that ever normally occurs.
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If there was no fallback, networking would be broken in an edge case where there are no network-provided or user-provided DNS servers. There has to be a default value to use when nothing else is provided, or that edge case will have a terrible user experience. Easy to understand.
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Only totally neutral fallback is a recursive resolver which wouldn't be good for performance or privacy. 3 serious fallback options: Quad9, Cloudflare, Google.
dnsprivacy.org/wiki/display/D
In terms of privacy policy, Cloudflare > Google > Quad9. Cloudflare/Quad9 didn't exist though.
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This is extensively documented at grapheneos.org/faq#default-dns already. GrapheneOS does this exactly the same way as AOSP. It uses a different fallback, but that makes no difference in practice. It is the same thing in practice, and it's hard to see how it could be made any better.
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It could transparently support DNS-over-HTTPS in addition to DNS-over-TLS, but DNS-over-TLS is a leaner protocol. The only real advantage of DNS-over-HTTPS is using port 443 to work around naive filtering. Could also just do DNS-over-TLS on port 443... why does DoH exist again?