If you have two separate google accounts, can you sign in with both and will the accounts have different activity settings ?

Question

or are they linked in some way ?

Answer 1

You can only sign in to one account per browser. To sign in to another account at the same time, use another browser. It's like using Chrome to log in the first account then Firefox with the second.

Answer 2

you cannot be signed in to 2 different accounts simultaneously.

and they are not linked unless you link them, as a backup email.

Answer 3

Accounts are always separate, but you can set to forward emails from one to the other.