Since YT comments are now G+ comments, I believe it now shows up every time you try to interact with anything, such as like/favourite/comment etc.
I turned my YT account into a G+ page when the option became available as a way to get rid of the prompts without using my real name on YT.
This has been their brilliant (and awful - I don't use gmail, and _hate_ this) move - to get people to use an [email protected], so there is no way you can ever take it anywhere else (because even if you want to forward, you have to keep the account active).
I'm very happy with Gmail and it's way better than all the other e-mail services that various entities force me to use, but the point I was making is that I could move out of Gmail with all my data if I wanted to.
> so there is no way you can ever take it anywhere else
The standard solution is to setup a google apps on your domain.
without deleting my entire G+ account and profile
I don't use G+/FB but even if I did, I have a hard time understanding this mentality. I wouldn't think twice about deleting any of social media profiles and even in places like HN where it's not possible to delete profiles, I just throwaway old profiles and start from scratch. Maybe I'm just paranoid but the last thing I want are my random musings being psychoanalyzed by nutters on the internet.
And as far as Gmail goes, you should be backing it up offline so that you can take your data and leave any time you want. This literally takes only 3 minutes to setup if you already use Thunderbird.