I have no gmail account, no Youtube account, and no Google Reader...Google's always been a little too big for me to want to trust more than I have to, so I've gotten by without accounts on their services...
And that means I get to feel smugly superior to everyone else in this discussion.
And that also means that in other than a few of these instances, you constantly feel inferior to everyone else in the society, because of the things you are missing :).
For a while I was manually checking websites. I used RSSowl for a time, then Thunderbird.
RSS is a simple, open protocol (heck, they burn two out of three letters in their acronym to say it's "really simple") and there are plenty of alternatives. If they're really unsatisfactory it wouldn't be too hard to roll your own.
Do you use Youtube to watch videos? Google to search?
Also, what do you do for email, roll your own? Got any tutorials if so (I sorta want to start dropping Google myself - search and Youtube will be tough though)? Anything I found was a bit too complicated or I just didn't want to spend that much time on it.
And that means I get to feel smugly superior to everyone else in this discussion.