How does this work for corporate emails?

In your first flow, items 2, 3 and 4 are entirely subjective.

2. Recall which email address they used Hardly, they just typed it into the forgot password field

3 and 4, you’re assuming a lot of things here. You’re assuming that they use a browser to view their email and you’re also assuming that if they do then they won’t have it bookmarked or already open. The reason you’re doing this is to give credence to your theory and push your answer.

As for your solution, it wouldn’t work in the majority of cases… How are you going to determine how someone accesses their email? By the domain? Wrong, just because someone has a Gmail or a Yahoo account that doesn’t mean they use the web interface to access them. If you tried to direct me to Gmail’s site when I use Mailbox to access my gmail account I’d be pretty annoyed.

The check email thing can work for the major email providers, I’m guessing but certainly not all like the writer suggested. Secondly, a user might not want to go to webmail when the Mail app on their computer will do.

However, I think there is something in replacing a 'Forgot Password' link to the Forgot Password page from the Sign In page to a 'Reset password’ link. Get rid of the Forgot Password page and just fire off an email to the address they have already typed in (or the email address linked to the username they typed in).

This is a bit nonsensical. Nice idea on the surface though!

Very clever.