[bigiain]

Sure, but that "provided I've discovered the issue in time" leaves a gaping hole for a sneaky attacker. If I've got your email password, and I'm camped on your email account while hitting all the other website's forgot password forms, and I delete all the mail as soon as I've retrieved the link - how do you "discover the issue"? In some ways, that sort of attack is even more insidious than taking over the Google account completely - at least being locked out of your account raises the big red flags immediately, how would you even notice I was reading all your mail with a stolen ASP? (While I'm being particularly evil in my thinking, I'm imagining an attacker quietly gaining access to read email, and not actively doing anything to arouse suspicion, then waiting for _you_ to hit passwrod reset links on various high-value-to-the-attacker sites, perhaps forcing that on you by triggering brute force protection on those other sites…)