I partially agree with the author, this does seem like a big deal. I was ecstatic with this feature because I felt like the odds of my email being compromised

I partially agree with the author, this does seem like a big deal. I was ecstatic with this feature because I felt like the odds of my email being compromised was near zero but not so much any more. I have 10+ application specific passwords and I was under the assumption that these were "application specific". I thought that my Google Talk application specific password was linked to the Google Talk services (and couldn't access other areas of my Google Account). The fact that my entire email contents can be leaked via IMAP if any of these generated passwords get out is kind of scary. Yes, it's still much better than before but not nearly as secure as I assumed.