conciselyverbose

It's fun how they're both conspiring not to use their ideas to not have to pay for them and also stealing their patented ideas at the same time.

Because it's lying to your customer to have a phone number you don't use listed. Listing a number is an advertisement that you offer phone support.

The alternative is to not list a phone number and to abandon Google until they remove the requirement.

Listing a phone number you won't answer is lying to your customers.

You should really work on your reading comprehension. I have repeatedly made it clear that the requirement is not OK.

"I'm only as much of a piece of shit as Microsoft" isn't a good defense.

There is no possible scenario where publicizing an invalid contact method is defensible behavior.

OK, then you're being really sketchy and screwing over customers.

Not publishing a phone number is perfectly fine. Publishing a phone number that's a black hole is extremely anti-consumer.

The issue isn't acquiring a number.

It's that publishing a number implicitly comes with the responsibility to monitor that number, which is a huge burden, especially if it's readily visible to bots.

A phone number? Hard fucking pass.

I don't think it's unusual.

Big companies need a promise of some length of support in order to commit to a product.