Yesterday I opened an online account at a bank, using my phone. The website asked me to take clear pictures of my ID card, and then record a selfie video doing a few movements and saying a few numbers. Done, in literally 5 minutes. Then of course regular logins are done with a password and 2FA, it's not like I have to show my ID every time, but I suppose if I got locked out of my account it's what they would use to identify me.

If banks can do it I don't see why Google can't. For many people, getting locked out of a Google account where they hold all their photos, connect to people via email, have their purchased Android apps, etc. is not much better than getting locked out of a bank account (depends on how much money on the account, I guess, but in many cases this is so).