Google Account

 Google Account  is an identity that can be used to authenticate for all of Google’s services, as well as other services using OAuth.

How to reduce tracking

 * Activity controls — use this to pause (turn off) Google Web & App activity, Location History, and YouTube History.
 * Also go to https://myactivity.google.com/ and turn off Web & App activity and YouTube history

How to see and remove what can use
To view which sites/applications have permission to use your Google Account, and selectively remove them, go to:
 * https://myaccount.google.com/permissions

See also: appaccess for links to view and remove permissions on other accounts/sites.

Features

 * multi-factor authentication
 * using TOTP
 * removable phone number
 * creating a new Google Account may (does?) require a phone number for Google to send a text message or a call with a code. However, once your account is setup, you may remove (de-associate) the phone number from your account, e.g. to avoid SMS account recovery vulnerabilities, once you setup another second factor authentication, such as a TOTP application
 * OAuth — see How to see and remove what can use
 * View activity on the account — see My Google Activity

My Google Activity
My Google Activity is https://myactivity.google.com/ where a Google Account user may change preferences about how much Google retains about their usage of various Google services, and some of this was reset to track users on 2022-03-29 per Ars Technica: Google Workspace will re-enable tracking for many users today