Earlier quoted context omitted.
AFAIK, the two things are orthogonal. My understanding was he'd already kickstarted a normal recovery process https://accounts.google.com/signin/recovery And he wanted more details, so I assume he spoke to somebody up the escalation chain in our support org, who gave him more details.
that's not what https://www.inc.com/sonya-mann/salil-mehta-free-speech.html says about it. "Mehta was lucky. The public outcry and press attention prompted Google to manually review his case." "It could have turned out differently. Without his impressive credentials and far-reaching network, Mehta never would have found out why his Google account was shut down. He wouldn't have been able to access his correspondence…
I actually work in a support org at Google (on the Enterprise side, admittedly).
That account recovery link I provided (https://accounts.google.com/signin/recovery) is available to anybody (This is for consumer - i.e. GMail. If you have an enterprise - i.e. GSuite account, it's slightly different in that your domain administrator can also restore you as well).
You don't need to be anybody special - you just go to that URL, fill in your details, and somebody will review it for you.
Yes, it will take time. If you make noise, it's possibly it will get escalated and you will get assurances from somebody that it's being looked into. But in general, it will take some time to process it, simply to ensure that we're giving you (and not somebody else) access to your account.
I know it sucks, but account security is tough, and I have nothing but respect for the hardworking people that handle that. In my second week at Google, I accidentally typed my password into a non-secure (but still legitimate) web-form. Within minutes, I got an alert asking me to change my password immediately. They take security very seriously.
Disclaimer: I work for Google, but any opinions above are my own.
