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So I've got a lot of problems with backgrounds currently. I love the flavor, but the implementation feels very lackluster. They restrict more than they enhance character creation, and the system could stand for significant improvement.
Let's start with lore, something intrinsically linked with backgrounds. Lore is PF2's counterpart to the profession skill, which is to say it's so narrow and circumstantial that it's rarely going to come into play. There are a few edge cases of professions which cover useful skills that can't be found elsewhere (sailing being the most common example in both PF1 and PF2), but for the most part lore skills are quite forgettable. But lore's problems go beyond being niche: just having lore doesn't actually make you good with it. Due to the way skills work in PF2, an untrained skill check can still be made at a -2 penalty. For characters with 10 intelligence, this means your trained lore check is still quite likely lower than untrained lore checks by other members of the party. A little spreadsheeting to calculate the probabilities, and there's only a 25% chance that your 10 intelligence character will actually get the highest result in the party if everyone rolls on the lore check (presuming two other characters with 10 intelligence and one 18 intelligence wizard are also rolling, none trained in your lore). It may be realistic for an 18 intelligence wizard to be a know-it-all, but the end result is that lore ends up irrelevant for most characters. As of right now intelligence seems to be the go-to dump stat, so that means wizards are the only class that are good with lore. Practicing a trade suffers the same problem, once again if you don't have a high intelligence you won't be good at any profession. Moreover, it leads to weird circumstances like an acrobat making an intelligence-based check to practice his trade as a circus performer.
Because lore is so inconsequential, backgrounds feel like mere proxies for their skill feat. This makes backgrounds more of a limitation than a boon; they lock certain concepts to certain skill feats, and this can result in unhappy marriages. On the one hand you can have thematic concepts like an ex-criminal paladin... but the Experienced Smuggler feat is essentially useless until you get up to at least mastery proficiency in stealth, so if your class doesn't have signature skill in stealth you're basically just throwing your background skill feat away. Or you could have the opposite side of the coin, with a character with 10 dexterity who is untrained in acrobatics chooses the acrobat background because the associated skill feat is useful to them (flagrant munchkinry). The sailor presents yet another problem; underwater marauder is basically a feat tax in aquatic campaigns, but useless in a land-based campaign. It does make sense that sailor is more useful in an aquatic campaign, it's a bit too wide a swing in my view.
Finally, there's the general feeling that we got two traits in PF1, and now we get one background in PF2. It just feels like we're getting less than we used to (a common problem across many categories) and there's no real reason for it to be that limited.
I do have three ideas on how to alleviate these problems:
1) Replace lore with an actual skill. Most backgrounds would offer only one skill, but some backgrounds (like scholar) might offer a choice. This is your background skill. You are trained in your background skill, and always treat it as a signature skill. You gain the ability to make profession checks to earn a living with your background skill. You automatically know the answer to any easy questions regarding your background, and can make a check using your background skill to answer more difficult questions relating to your background's subject matter.
This neatly folds lore into the existing skills. It also means your 'lore' proficiency automatically improves whenever you improve your proficiency with your background skills, giving a bit more compaction in that respect. This is also a subtle incentive to continue investing in your background skill, without making it so good as to be mandatory to do so.
2) Each background should allow for the selection of any skill feat whose associated skill matches the background skill. So acrobat would allow you to pick any skill feat associated with acrobatics. You would still need to meet the prerequisites of the skill feat in question.
This addresses the problem of using backgrounds to bypass prerequisites, future-proofs backgrounds, allows greater customization, while still narrowing choices to thematic ones associated with that background. Each background could suggest a default choice, creating a mid-ground between speed of character creation and customization.
3) Campaign backgrounds are chosen in addition to your regular background, essentially giving you a second background. They do not increase your ability scores, and do not grant you a profession. They only grant a trained skill and a skill feat. If your campaign is not using campaign backgrounds, you can select a free skill feat instead.
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I agree with pretty much all of this. It's a good implementation Paizo should strongly consider. :)