Yep. Here's my anecdotal story: I am involved with phone call centers. I have a lot of numbers. I use phone numbers like others use throwaway catch-all email a

Yep. Here's my anecdotal story: I am involved with phone call centers. I have a lot of numbers. I use phone numbers like others use throwaway catch-all email addresses. I signed up for the covid vaccine through my family doctor who partners with a hospital. They required registration (no walk ups) and the online form was branded (domain, privacy policy, everything) to the hospital. I used a unique email address and a unique phone number. I'm a curious person. To confirm the appointment they send you a text. Guess what number the text went to? Not the one I typed in. It was to a unique number that I only used with my Google billing account. (I was using a corporate computer in no way tied to Google.) I looked into it and the hospital partners with a fourth-party health care scheduling servicer, who then has some sort of partnership with Google cause all I saw was that Google bought a low-percentage stake in the company. Something tells me the integration between these types of companies and Google is much stronger than the article lets on.