The fact that they quietly slurped up a personal number from a verification process years ago and then just decided to publish it later is exactly the kind of dark pattern you'd expect from a smaller, shady adtech company, and not the world's largest one
It's possible, but I think it's more likely that the Google account that has made the Three Rings app (https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=uk.org.threeri...) with a listed phone number (+44 7795...) also claimed ownership of the Three Rings website through whatever domain tools Google offers.
In that case, the developer provided Google with a way for Three Rings customers to reach them and they then published that number.
I don't know why the app's developers decided to use their personal phone number for their Google Play business contact information, but that seems like the most reasonable explanation to me.
If the author did not provide that phone number to Google Play, then he will need to also update his information there to get the phone number delisted, or it will be a matter of time before it appears on the Google Search page again.
At this point, "they'll use it however they want, eventually" feels like the default mental model for any data you hand over, no matter what the original context was
