Hm, the point of authenticator is to not use the phone, because phjone numbers may be more vulnerable. wasn't there a case of social hacking where the telco forwarded to hacker's phone?
That was a case of them circumventing the 2FA he had, they just granted access.
Authenticator is a mobile phone app, how are you supposed not to use your phone with it?
That seems awfully similar to what keeps happening with their G+ and Hangouts app: every few weeks, the apps think you never logged on the damn thing, and take you back through the whole process including a welcome tour!
So your account has not gone away, nor has it been deleted, nor has any magic happened; your account is still there safe and sound on Google's servers, it's just that the settings in this one mobile app have been wiped, correct?
Without the settings in your authenticator you're locked out of accounts that require a 2-factor token from it, unless you've got backup tokens printed out.
Well, depends on where you're looking. The app's record of the account has gone away. Given that this is an authentication app, that's a rather serious problem.
I use two factor auth but not this app, so I am not sure why people are going to have such a bad day...