It's great to see how far open-source tech has come that someone like the author is able to switch to non-google services!

Moreover, I'd just like to mention that it would be fine to leave the gmail account open if it was just for password resets, etc (I've left mine open for whatever obscure service that I might have forgotten to switch over). It is a bit annoying yes, but Google does not really get any data out of it from you apart from knowing which services you have an account on.