[pwg]

> This is a very shady dark pattern by Alphabet corporation.

Advertising company (Doubleclick [1]) wants phone numbers to better target ads. No surprise there.

[1] The company currently calling itself Google is not the same Google as yesteryear. In 2008 Google purchased Doubleclick, and what happened is that the advertising rot from Doubleclick ate Google from the inside out. What we have now calling itself Google is actually all the evil that was Doubleclick, only calling itself Google. That's why the Google motto no longer includes "Don't be evil".

[mikewarot]

This sounds exactly like the way McDonnell Douglas ate Boeing from the inside out.

[hulitu]

> The company currently calling itself Google is not the same Google as yesteryear.

You can say this about every company. The reality is that they sold user data from the beginning.

[echoangle]

Don’t they just want the phone number to make having multiple accounts harder? Or is that what you mean by better targeting?

[ButlerianJihad]

I have currently got 5 Google accounts: 4 personal, and one from school.

Google encourages multiple accounts and it’s not like social media where they stamp out sockpuppets.

Also, a real phone number that isn’t VoIP is excellent authentication, because real mobile phone numbers are necessarily linked to SIMs for paying customers, so it’s really pragmatic to rely on them.