Impersonating someone to take over their account is already illegal in most 'respectable' countries, but generally the people doing this either can't be traced

Impersonating someone to take over their account is already illegal in most 'respectable' countries, but generally the people doing this either can't be traced (at least not cost-effectively) and/or don't live in one of those countries. I think the point of the money here isn't to dissuade bad actors trying to take over accounts, but to allow Google to hire the people necessary to do proper identity verification for account recovery, when there's no automated option available. It would provide a last resort for people who are legitimately in situations like that of the OP. The problem I see with that is that things aren't worth Google's time unless they have the potential to make (or save) billions of dollars. If this is a problem that only ever affects a handful of people, I don't see how they would ever have sufficient incentive to do something about it, even if they could charge for the service.