Completely agree. The issue here is that Google accounts are a "free service" (obviously advertiser funded), and they're not even really tied strongly to real

Completely agree. The issue here is that Google accounts are a "free service" (obviously advertiser funded), and they're not even really tied strongly to real people. A given account could be shared between people, or change owners over time. I've always felt that, done right, this could be a revenue opportunity for Google - offer a premium account where you give them your proper identity details, and tick a few boxes about how you want your account to be managed if you lose login access (reset to someone who can show ID? destroy?). I'd gladly pay a non-trivial amount to get decent service like that in an emergency. As it stands, you're not paying Google anything. You're not the customer, you're the thing being sold. With no revenue from users, it's understandable that they won't entertainment appeals about their decisions. I suspect they wouldn't want to offer a premium account though, due to the bad press of admitting the problem.