I have been using the same Google account for over 15 years. Obviously, I was much younger when I made it, and C. Scott Brown from 15 years ago didn’t have the best taste in usernames. It’s not an embarrassing username or anything, but it hasn’t aged well. Additionally, for the past 15 years, I have been using an Outlook account in tandem with my Gmail account. This two-pronged approach has made my digital life more complicated than it needs to be.
This year, I decided to shutter my Outlook account and go all in on Gmail as part of what I’ve been calling a Digital Life Reset. This has also involved moving every digital thing I own into one cloud storage system (Google Drive), consolidating my smart home under one umbrella (Homey Pro), trying to use the Gmail app across all platforms (which was a dismal failure), and more. I figured that if I’m doing all this Digital Life Reset stuff, I might as well also change my Google account to something that the current me would be happier about. I went into this process with optimism. After all, how difficult could it be to change your Gmail account?