If I don’t have Google Chrome, NVIDIA drivers, or Steam installed on my ThinkPad, is it preferable to disable these repositories? I especially loathe Google and don’t want them having access to anything on my laptop.
You can disable them if you aren’t using them.
You can see if they are currently enabled by opening the software menu then clicking on the hamburger menu at the top right and selecting the repositories. That will provide a full listing of all repos installed and whether they are enabled or disabled. You can disable or enable them one at a time if the current setting is not what you want.
You can also select to remove all 3rd party repos if you absolutely do not want them installed. I would suggest disabling and not removing because only if you are downloading something from that repo is there any way for you to be connected to them.
Just for your information. All that happens if you enable a repo is that DNF and Gnome Software pull meta data for that repo. That doesn’t mean, at all, that Google or any repository owner have any access to your computer - at all. all they see are the numbers of repo refreshs and the IP it was coming from.
Of course, no need to keep them if you don’t install anything from the repo: just entiely remove them from /etc/yum.repos.d/
Note that the repo files are owned by fedora-workstation-repositories and will be restored upon the package update if removed manually.