Also: if you remove some pre-installed apps, like GTalk, some other apps won't work anymore. If you remove GMail nothing will work anymore...
Removing those apps can only be done on rooted phones.
This is one reason why rooting is not advised for normal users.
thats stupid, who would remove the gtalk or gmail - then why did you get a "google phone"?
what I am saying is just like with a computer that you buy, it always comes with crap installed on it that you dont want, but you can remove it if you want to - but since its Windows and being a Microsoft OS and all, if you try to remove something like say "Internet Explorer" or "Explorer" you will have a computer that wont work properly at all, this is because IE and Explorer are tied into Windows, you have to use Explorer or you cant look at anything and IE can be just ignored and never used (although it is needed for some reason because all the methods that remove it always cause problems - except for that one copy that MS put out without it for the EU, wonder how you install a web browser if you dont have one, lol), set Firefox or something else as default and you are all set
so its the same with these phones - you just not use gmail because for some reason you bought a google phone and dont have a gmail account (what no yahoo phone, arrg!) and want to use yahoo or something else maybe Bing (then just get ther verizon galaxy s you will love that) or whatever then you can just use the normal email app and be all set - the thing is the gmail app probably handles all the in/out of email traffic even if you arent using a gmail account so thats why if you remove it things dont work
but there is no reason I have to have half of the things running that are running - there is no reason why I cant be asked every time that a data transfer is happening unless its a sync thing for an app that I allow - I want an "opt in" type of situation for things to access my info and give it out, not the other way around and then not even allow me to stop it
If you do not want to see the Apps in your app Drawer you can install Launcher Pro and there is an option to hide app icons that you don't want to see. I have done this with Amazon MP3 as well as some other Apps that came pre-installed and I never use.
you probably just sweep dirt under the rug because if its out of sight its not there anymore and cant cause problems - you just dont get it