What's the difference between having a Google account and a YouTube account? Google owns YouTube.

It's the difference like you have to get a Condé Nast subscription in order to comment on reddit.

Condé Nast owns reddit, remember?

I don't want to link my personal email (Gmail) account with the what cats I watch on the Internet.

Everyone uses the old, already spam-ridden hotmail account for that.

I liked being able to have a separate YouTube account to my Google account. Actually, I like having separate accounts for everything.