I would agree but GV seems to be a forgotten product and I'm not going to tie something as important as my phone number to something Google might shut down on a whim.
Google has recently integrated Google Voice into Hangouts. They probably won't update and may deprecate the Google Voice site and apps. They have also been pushing phone calls from Hangouts. My suspicion is that Google will open up the usage of virtual phone numbers in Hangouts.
I don't think that's going to happen. GV has been around since 2009 - I got my number then and it's been great. This is not Reader - several million people and businesses have GV numbers. Of course it can happen, and there may be other reasons you might not want Google to handle your phone calls, but I estimate the probability of Google just shutting this down as pretty small.
At worst you'll have to transfer your number to some other service. While I wouldn't be shocked by Google shutting down Voice, I would be shocked if it just abruptly vanished one day with no warning.
A lot of apps auto-detect your phone number. Not sure if there is a way of sending the Google Voice number to the apps or having your phone think that is your number (normally the network defines it).
On Android you can set up the phone to send the GV number as your caller-ID. So when calling Lyft they should see your GV number, which will never get associated with anyone else.
EDIT: As Someone1234 points out, however, caller-ID might be irrelevant, and having GV might not help. Another reason to be very selective about what apps you install.
Right, but most apps don't "call up" anything. They just gather your phone number using the OS's APIs and then send it via HTTPS/JSON. Caller ID would play no part in that process.