[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.