Well, maybe this signals the beginning of the end. Maybe this is the sign of the end times. Maybe, just maybe, there is a chance that things like losing deals happen for Google just like, gulp, the rest of the business world.

Despite big wins in the past year like the city of Los Angeles moving to Google Apps for e-mail and more it appears that Google is not just gonna steamroll their way into enterprise accounts normally reserved for Microsoft.

Mashable reports

The University of California – Davis has stopped using Gmail for its 30,000-member staff and faculty body. The university was trying Gmail for faculty and staff with plans to roll out service to the entire campus. But school officials say this email system isn’t secure or private enough to meet their standards.

CIO Peter Siegel, Academic Senate IT chair Niels Jensen and Campus Council IT chair Joe Kiskis said the plug was pulled on Gmail because faculty were concerned that Google’s services wouldn’t keep their correspondence private enough. Many privacy experts also say that Gmail’s social component, Google Buzz, is the source of privacy and security vulnerabilities.

Ouch. That’s gonna bruise. If Google Buzz was indeed one of the reasons for a 30,000 seat deal going down the crapper then treating everyone’s privacy like it didn’t exist may hurt Google where it really hurts: in the wallet.

Apparently this is not the first time that security concerns from a prominent institution of higher learning has put the brakes on “going Google”.

About a month ago, Yale University made a similar decision. Yale’s concerns centered around security issues, technological risks and the way Google manages data in the cloud.

It’s interesting that big city governments like LA and Washington, DC have gone with Google no problem. Wonder how the Google Buzz privacy debacle went over in those accounts?

Well, maybe Google’s products aren’t what they claim to be since they appear to be just “close enough for government work”.