> 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".

You are talking about something that happened almost 20 years ago. The "company currently calling itself Google" is the Google of the past two decades, grandpa.

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