I don’t know why but figured the same as you. If they bothered to document it, I’d bother to follow it. I did the download only option too since I also run opnsense from a VM.

Zwave always works for me - but costs more. ZigBee is the bulk of my devices. If possible, I avoid tuya stuff but some solutions are only tuya (switches without neutral wires come to mind.)

I run proxmox so I have a VM dedicate to HA OS with frequent backups. This allows me to also run a number of other things without worrying about inadvertently messing up my HA install

I’m sure it’s Google’s fault. Lately they have been more and more siloed with their stuff. All the more reason to use a local hub (even a prebuilt one like Hubitat) and then share the devices with Google Home. That’s how I do it with Amazon