I found the way Google dealt with YouTube logins to be pretty horrendous. For a long time YouTube kept asking me to associate a google account with my YouTube

I found the way Google dealt with YouTube logins to be pretty horrendous. For a long time YouTube kept asking me to associate a google account with my YouTube user ID. So I gave in and tried to do that. I tried to use one of my three other gmail addresses — no, that doesn't work because they were existing Google accounts. I had to create a brand new gmail address just to associate with my YouTube user ID. I also keep forgetting the email address I used to associate with that ID. They have user name recovery, password recovery, but not email-associated-with-username recovery. The whole experience was drawn out and terrible.