CIO Peter Siegel, Academic Senate IT Chair Niels Jensen and Campus Council IT Chair Joe Kiskis said the plug was pulled on Gmail because members of the faculty were concerned that it wouldn't keep their correspondence private enough. Many privacy experts also say that Gmail's social component, Google Buzz, is a source of privacy and security vulnerabilities.
School officials also noted that "outsourcing e-mail may not be in compliance with the University of California Electronic Communications Policy."
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.
On the other hand, however, many other schools and local governments are using Gmail and Google Apps to lower IT costs. Just last year, Los Angeles "went Google", a proposal that was agreed upon unanimously by the city council. Washington, D.C., also uses Google's applications and services, including Gmail.
If you're a Gmail user, do you use the service personally or professionally? Are you ever concerned or uncomfortable about privacy issues in Gmail? And do you think UC Davis's faculty is being needlessly paranoid, or are its concerns valid?