> Needless to say, I will never again use gmail for critically important things.

That's a hot take. If it was critically important, you'd have 2FA and a recovery phone number associated with it - which would have prevented you from getting stuck in a trust-fail situation to begin with.

Use whatever service you want, but your takeaway from this situation is a bit absurd.

Edit to add: I'm not saying Google's algorithm is perfect here, but relying on heuristic voodoo ("I use the same IP, so I should be fine") for "critically important things" instead of using well-established means of securing access to critically important things (e.g. 2FA, backup mobile number) is a bit insane.