now I MUST link my YouTube account with Google

I tried to sign into YouTube today, but I cannot do so now until I link to a Google account. They have been 'warning' me about this for some time every time I did sign in to YT. Now it's here.

I don't have a Google account and don't want one. I use nothing else from Google except the search, mostly for privacy concerns. The whole thing seems very sinister to me, as if Google is going to try and aggregate as much of my web activity as it can for its own purposes (making money). No good can come of it from my perspective.

 

Youtube is owned by Google, so in fact, you use a service by Google. You can log in with Facebook account, but I do not think, that you would have one.
You do not have to use a google account, but it works like an openid, as for terms of service, as youtube's user, you agreed to google TOS as well.

 

Just checked. I got a YouTube/Google log in page.

While the log in still says "Sign in to YouTube with your YouTube OR Google Account "; it no longer accepts the YouTube sign in. I have a Google account so no problems logging in with those credentials.