I was a but creeped out when they automatically logged me in to youtube. After I found out there was no way to log out of youtube without logging out of Google Reader and Gmail, I am checking my RSS feeds and email a lot less. There should be an option to opt out, it's ridiculous.
Last time I checked, there was a way to unlink your Youtube account from the Google one, so it may worth a check, but no guarantees here as Google changed a lot on this front lately.
Just tried it, and you can indeed unlink the accounts. But you can't login with just a youtube account. You need a Google account.
Still useful to relink to a throwaway account instead of the main gmail account. But I'm not sure the multiple account will let you stay logged in correctly..
I keep thing separate by doing only Google things in Chrome and everything else in Firefox.
I will continue to shun Google+ because of the stories about people being shut out of it over the 'looks like a real name' rules because I have an Android phone and can't risk losing access to it.
You might want to try netvibes.com as an alternative to using Google for its RSS feature. It has some nice features, for example being able to Tweet an RSS headline directly out of the interface.
/not affiliated, just some hardcore user
