I don't use Gmail. I have a Google account, but it's only used for updating browser add-ons. Last login was over a year ago. Mail comes from a IMAP server. Android's standard mail client does IMAP just fine. All my desktops and laptops use the same IMAP server, so it all syncs.
I don't have much Google stuff from my Android phone. When I bought the phone, uninitialized, it asked for a Google login. I clicked "later", and then deleted Google First-Time Login so that wouldn't come up again. After a while, voice dialing broke due to some update at Google, so I deleted more Google services. Location services come from ZANavi. (That uses unassisted GPS, so it takes a while to get a fix.)