I’ve heard about Google correlating these accounts (through billing methods, contact methods, access patterns) and banning them together when one infringes on something. I’m not sure it’s the protection you think it is.

Yes they do. If you want to bypass these rules, just make a ton of accounts and wait for a couple months and the use those accounts with whatever credit card you have (keep in mind that you should get another card from your bank because google can tell when your card is a generated one like privacy.com)

Won’t they just correlate the name and address on your different credit cards?

I don't recall ever giving my real name/address for any billing address/name, because most if not all the time, they don't really care (or at least I never seen a difference).

Has anyone actually been locked out of Gmail because of a google cloud bill? I don't think they are connected in the sense that your Gmail/Youtube/Android etc account will stop working if you don't pay.

Same with Amazon accounts and AWS bills for that matter.

I understand the concern though... and using separate accounts is probably best practice.

All those accounts are "related". Made from the same PC, used from the same phone, etc.

It's against the ToS to create another account to circumvate a ban.