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One day one of my old accounts received a HaveIbeenPwned notification that it appeared in a hacked email list.
Like a good citizen I changed my password to a new, secure, unique password. In addition I set up 2FA with Google Authenticator.
The phone broke, with it the Google Authenticator access and the not full, synced password list I had.
My fault for loosing the password. My fault for not printing single use codes ahead of time. But I do remember at least one of the old passwords. The recovery email and recovery phone number are still in my possession. And yet - I can't get access to the old account anymore. No matter what I try, there's nothing I can do to prove to Google's recovery wizard that the account is mine.
The help forums are filled with posts of this or a similar style, the only advice being to use the wizard, or create a new account. No chance to recover the email account with my name and plenty of old contacts.
After trying for weeks, even digging out and repairing my old laptop just for a better chance to restore it, I give up.
My takeaway is to move everything out of Google before it's too late. Luckily that account didn't have my 200+GB of photos or old work documents, but the next one I lose might.
How many of the m/billions of Gmail accounts are by now inaccessible? How come such a gigantic company can't find a way to prevent such ridiculous reasons for account loss?
Google absolutely can do better than this, it's just harder to hoard $100b in cash if you pay for that kind of support, or taxes where you made all that profit, or health care for all your employees. They chose this path out of options that included having mere tens of billions in the bank and ethics.
This sounds like an issue that could occur with any account protected by 2FA. It sounds like you were cavalier about it and now you're paying the price you knew you'd have to pay if you lost your 2FA device.
There are a lot of bad actors out there trying to social hack through 2FA. The only correct move as an account provider is to tell you you're out of luck, sorry.
If there's anything Google (and others) ought to do, is make the warning way scarier; or force you to check a box confirming that you've securely stored your recovery codes.