Only if have a pre-G+ youtube account, and only 14 days after you've connected it to G+.

So technically yes, but I imagine very, very few people qualify.

https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/2657858?hl=en

So you still need to get a G+ account first if you don't want to have to use G+ on youtube?

This is as bad as that dialog on youtube that asks you to create a G+ Account, a G+ Page or fuck off.

I've deleted my G+ account and I'm still kind of confused over what works or not. It's even designed so that you can no longer save clips to a list of yours (including "Favorites" or "Watch later") from the video clip page itself -- this brings up the "Join Google+" page.

But! Since your lists and their contents are still accessible, it made me wonder...

And it was shown that if you click on the upper left "hamburger" icon, scroll to the "Playlists" section, pick a playlist... Well, then the list is shown along with a fully functioning "Add video clip" button, which adds a video clip to the selected list on your disconnected account. Uuugh. I can only imagine it is to push users (back) to Google+...

So, AFAIK, you get to keep your YouTube account which can still store which clips you like and dislike, you can save them to default or custom playlists after jumping through some hoops, but you can't comment, your channel seems to be gone, and you can't upload new clips. All those "can'ts" bring up the "Join Google+" page for me now.

So in essence, if you are a creator, you seem to need a Google+ account. If you are a consumer and OK with not commenting, you don't need Google+.

From the YouTube Help Center:

"You'll soon be able to comment, upload, and create channels without Google+. The comments you make on YouTube will appear only on YouTube and not also on Google+ (and vice versa). Check out our blog post for more information and keep an eye on this article for updates."

Building a comment system at the scale of YouTube (while preserving the existing set of comments), along with creating a new identity system for it is likely not a small amount of work. I'd guess that they're still working on making it a reality.

> Building a comment system at the scale of YouTube along with creating a new identity system for it is likely not a small amount of work. I'd guess that they're still working on making it a reality.

Well , Youtube had all these things before the G+ insanity.

I don't really see how that's relevant; you're talking about a system from years ago. It's not like they could easily just go back to that, especially with so many comments stored in the new system.

Furthermore, the G+-powered comments section brought about many new features that I imagine they wouldn't want to get rid of, like threaded replies, text formatting, improved ranking and spam detection, moderation tools, and probably more.

In my experience its still a requirement. On the opposite side, "Hangouts On Air" requires a YouTube account to be created and associated with your G+ account if you want to broadcast.

They should have stayed with -1- account system so Google+, Youtube,..etc. would have been added as services. Why this was not done is beyond me, they already had the software infrastructure running in terms of how Gmail works with its various services, all that needed to be done was add G+ and Youtube to the list? Also it would have meant that people felt safe to try these other services out rather than ending up with a confusing array of accounts that can be (at times not) cancelled, merged, and, most of all, have to be managed separately (and I guess sometimes jointly if "Hangouts On Air" needs to work!) :/

I know that experience all too well. I have two linked accounts — one my private Gmail and one my Google Apps account. So now I have three YouTube accounts... one for the G+ profile, one for the private email and one for the Google Apps account. It's maddenning trying to track which one is logged in at any given time.

What is a 'G+' account? Is there a difference between a regular Google account that I use to log into Gmail, and a Google+ account?

It's essentially the "souped up" version of the old Google account that you had in the past. If you want, you can fill out a profile and use it to share/collaborate with other people or you can continue to ignore it if you aren't interested in those functions.

I always thought it was kind of a bummer that G+ was dead in the water due to a critical mass of users on Facebook (and no common protocol like email, etc). If I had to choose one of those services for social networking I'd pick G+ any day due to (IMO) a much nicer UI, functionality, and mobile app but again, since you can't just pick your service and communicate with everyone, as you can with email, this would require everyone to migrate en masse and that just isn't happening for various reasons.

So yeah, sorry for the digression. G+ is their name for the functions they added to the original Google account and can be used or ignored as you see fit.

Google+ is Google's social network, like facebook. And I don't want to use either.

I understand what Google+ is, but I don't get what a 'Google+' account is in relation to logging in to Youtube or Gmail, and its difference to a regular Google account.

I can't make comments on Youtube. It doesn't tell me why, but I think it's because I deleted my G+ account.

I have a youtube account. There is no Google+ linked to it. I cannot make comments. The account is 3 months old. I have no channel set up. I think you need a channel to comment.

Even though the G+ requirement is a real bummer, there's no denying that YouTube comments have become slightly less of a cesspool since they implemented it.