>Unfortunately I did not have a phone number associated with this account. My understanding is I would have been able to recover my account, If I had one.
It boggles my mind how people can have their entire life tied to this service and not connect a phone number, especially since google regularly warns you during login that this can happen if you don't add your number. They even ask to confirm every now and then in case your number changed and you forgot to update it. If you're worried about giving them your number for data privacy reasons, you should not have used their service for your whole life's activities anyway.
It boggles my mind how people can have their entire life tied to this service and not connect a phone number, especially since google regularly warns you during login that this can happen if you don't add your number. They even ask to confirm every now and then in case your number changed and you forgot to update it. If you're worried about giving them your number for data privacy reasons, you should not have used their service for your whole life's activities anyway.