I understand the difference between Android and AOSP.
I know from personal experience that it's perfectly possible to use an Android phone without Gapps and what is commonly known as Google services.
But AOSP is still Google!
The Android Open Source Project is very much a Google project. They hold the reigns. They decide what gets coded and what doesn't.
The implications are vast - it's the main reason for me to not use any Google product, however open source it might be.

And the calls to Google servers are still there in AOSP, and developers of "alternative" OSs based on AOSP rarely bother to take those out. Something that never ceases to amaze me.

So yes, there are still "traces of Google" in AOSP.