Why YSK: A Google account is not the same as a Gmail account, and you don’t need to create a new Gmail email account to have a Google account.
I’ve spoken to many different people who equate a Google account to a Gmail account. This is not the case. Unfortunately, this leads to many new Gmail accounts being created, solely because they think that they need to have a Gmail in order to access other Google services.
Here’s the gist:
A Google account gives you access to Google services like Sheets, Docs, Calendar, Drive, Photos, Gmail, YouTube, etc.
A Gmail account is an email service account with Google. When you create a Gmail, you also create a Google account by default.
However, the reverse is not true. If you create a Google account (with a non-Gmail email address), it does not automatically give you a Gmail account.
If you already have an email account with another provider, you can use that as your Google account.
For example: Let’s say your email is jane@example.com. Rather than creating jane@gmail.com, you can opt to create a Google account with jane@example.com and avoid creating an account for Gmail.
Unfortunately, Google tries to get you to create a Gmail account during the process of creating a Google account. (see image).
It’s important to differentiate this and prevent people from registering new Gmail accounts unnecessarily.
No real harm, but it’s one more account to manage/worry about.
Flipside is that relying on a singular account is also bad, as now it’s a single point of failure in regards to security.
You’re making a new account either way. Whether you login with a gmail or other email address makes no difference to it being a Google account. Making a gmail you ALSO get another email, which you can promptly ignore until some possible point in the future where it may be useful.