How can I cancel a spare Gmail account?

I think this is just a problem of our time, actually, the ton of different accounts we all have on the many different services available. With a name like "Dave" and a last name like "Taylor", I know for sure that I'm not the only Dave Taylor on any service I'm involved with. In fact, in college another Dave Taylor used to snag my financial aid checks, but that's another story, as they say!

Finding a great account name or "handle" for many of these services is a tricky proposition, and ending up with something like "dave2347" stinks, so it IS worth putting in the time and effort to find the best possible in my opinion. Problem is, while many services, including Gmail, let you do that as part of the signup process, sometimes it takes a few hours, or even a few days, before you think of the simple, witty, easily remembered handle that describes an aspect of how you want to be portrayed online.

Some services, like Twitter, will let you switch handles once you've signed up, if he new one's available, but for many, once you sign up you're locked in, whether it works in the long run or not. It's like URL mappings on sites like MySpace and Facebook: once you specify your nickname, that's what it is forever and ever.

Now, with Gmail, turns out that can't actually cancel a Gmail account within Gmail so you need to be a bit more adventurous. I finally figured it out, so let me show you...

Start out by logging in to the account you want to cancel and looking on the top right:

Click on "Settings", then go to "Accounts and Settings":

Once you're there, scroll down to find the following:

That's the key to getting this to work: you need to switch from Gmail to "Google Accounts", which is a centralized account management area on the Google site.

Even once you get here, however, it's still a bit of a puzzle what to do:

Turns out you need to click on "Edit", which then shows you:

Since I just wanted to completely delete this Gmail Google account, I chose the last option, "Close account and delete all services and info associated with it".

You are then presented with what is quite frankly a very interesting disclaimer:

It makes me wonder what people have tried to do, buying things through Google Checkout and then canceling accounts, and so on. Fortunately, that's not going to impact what you or I are doing, so I just proceeded by checking all the buttons, re-entering the password, jumping through hogsheads of real fire, and leaping tall buildings in a single bound...

The fateful click on 'Delete Google Account' and...

Signed, sealed and delivered.