Google adds feature to show if your Gmail was accessed from another country

Mine popped up today saying my account was being accessed from US! I'm in the UK

So what happens if the hacker logs in before me? Do they get a security message so they can quickly change my password? :)

Google did not forget Poland.

Mine popped up saying it had been accessed from china D:

I don't know if I'm being paranoid or what but just six hours ago I finally got home after a day of being unable to access the 'net due to work issues. When I tried to access two of my more commonly used g-mail addresses and 'lo and behold I couldn't login. Apparently my password had changed sometime in between. I use the same password for both, since I don't have any of my financial accounts tied to either. They're mostly used for my everyday browsing and an account to direct all the spam to. Well, I go about trying to recover my password but apparently sometime in between yesterday and today my recovery e-mail address had changed. I haven't had an active yahoo email address since at least 1999 or so, so I couldn't have changed it to a yahoo domain. I don't usually visit the web site to check my email as I prefer pop access, but I did receive one of those warnings at the top of the page yesterday when I accidentally clicked gmail on the homepage instead of going to the news section. So on one of the recovery websites it mentions an e-mail that is pretty much copied verbatim from an e-mail I received about 24 hours ago in regards to some guy that needs money to fly home from London. Talk about weird coincidence. Long story short I filled out a account has been compromised report (boy I was lucky I had archives up some of the details saved on my computer or I would never have been able to guess some of the stuff they ask for) and was finally able to reset my passwords.

Is this some ploy by google to force people to change their passwords? I know I haven't changed the password since I created the account back in '05, and to be honest I wouldn't feel the loss of the account, but it did annoy me since I do receive some fairly entertaining updates that would be a hassle to set up filters for again. I'm pretty fed up with google just introducing features without sending any notices before hand. That orkut feature a while back was rather annoying. Instead of providing an option to opt it, it was the opposite, having to offer an opt-out option.

This is awesome!

"Therefore, even if the hacker knows that a user is based in the US and uses a US proxy to mask their actual location, the alert may still pop up if the proxy is located in a state other than where the user normally logs on. Google didn't say this in so many words, but the current "activity on this account" screen shows activity listed by state (so, consider this an educated guess)."

Wouldn't this be a problem for anyone using a cellular modem? My Verizon MiFi picks up IP addresses from other states pretty much every single time I use it.

Mine said United States.
I changed my password, but would this pop up even if the hacker only tried to access my account and not really succeeded in gaining entry?
Because I know who did this to my account, long time enmity. And I doubt if he's this intelligent to do this.