Ok. I’d say the likelihood it was a coincidence is pretty high then, but not 100%. We can’t really know all of what Google is monitoring when you use an Android phone, since their code on top of AOSP is closed source. It sounds unlikely that this was because of active monitoring though.

I don't think that was very clear since other people also assumed you were using it as your account in Conversations.

A recovery email doesn't really have anything to do with XMPP. Using Google or whatever won't make them be able to read your messages.