As you may have heard, Facebook got into a little bit of trouble last week after a Feb. 15 post at the Consumerist that discussed the social networking site’s new terms of service.

When the dust settled, Facebook’s Chief Privacy Officer, Chris Kelly, said users have and always will own the data they post on the site. The supreme law of the Facebook land, Kelly said, was and always will be the terms each user sets via the privacy settings on the site.

Privacy crisis averted, right? Not at N.C. State.

We’ve definitely had a history of issues regarding online privacy on campus. Students have been seen as a target for lawsuits from the Recording Industry Association of America, which was based off searches through IP addresses. Three years ago, resident advisers used Facebook pictures as proof of underage drinking in dorms.

And now, we are looking to switch e-mail services away from the current Cyrus-powered webmail system. The leading candidate, unsurprisingly, is Google.

Now don’t get me wrong: Google practically owns me. I use Gmail, Google Chat, Google Docs, Google Maps, Google Scholar, Google Calendar and Google Reader. And if there ever was a Google Alarm Clock or Google Diet, I’d probably use those too. And the one time my Gmail account was down for a few hours, I was twitching like a bunny rabbit on crystal meth due to e-mail withdrawal.

Yes, Google is a ubiquitous part of our new society, quickly entering regular conversation (and the dictionary) as a verb to describe how anyone with a computer can find the answer to any question.

But therein lies the problem — Google owns me, meaning I’m subject to the terms of service. And much like the Force, there is a dark side to Google.

The obvious problem is the terms of service — were we to switch to Google’s Apps for Education program, we’d definitely be subject to the terms of use. While they are quite reasonable (albeit full of the legal mumbo-jumbo you’d expect), they still move some of the power regarding online transactions to a third party that has less of a stake in attempting to guarantee the sanctity of your webmail.

Google is also a bit more of a target for hackers, phishers, spammers and the like — they warehouse a lot data for a lot of people. If you don’t believe me, consider this: in July of 2005, Google and Yahoo were competitive in the search index market, with Google holding a 36.5 percent to 30.5 percent lead. Today, the gap is 63 percent to 21 percent.

It’s clear Google is starting to monopolize the search engine market, in good part due to brand recognition. Equally transparent is the fact that people here at NCSU may be screaming for the Google ice cream simply because of that recognition.

I urge caution: do we really want the University to move our e-mail data to a service we don’t have complete control of? More importantly, do we need the University to give us Google accounts when we have the freedom to sign up for one ourselves?

We should take time to deliberate and consider all options, including making University-provided e-mail an optional utility available to all students and faculty before we throw everyone on the Google train and get going with a whoot-whoot onto the increasingly dangerous information superhighway.