Why am I feeling enveloped by Google? Is it because I use Gmail? Google Maps? Google Docs? Or that my current desktop is iGoogle? I have to admit that I have been considering Google Apps and maybe even Google Enterprise, if I ran my own business.

I find myself spending more and more of my time in the Google Dome, with that colorful logo lurking somewhere in the background as I work, play, find directions, or look up the closest gas station. I know I can quit anytime. No one’s forcing me. But somehow, I find myself using Google for just one more thing.

I know how I became addicted: It started with that simple Google search page on Firefox. Most of us thought of search as a service that various sites and browsers provided. But Google always understood the business better than most and my searches became data points for Google. Now all that I have craved, queried, or shouldn’t have been reading at all ends up collected into Google’s vast data stores, processed into a digital image of my dreams, anxieties, and desires so that Google can serve me amazingly relevant ads, whether I want them or not.

Apparently, I’m not alone in feeling that Google is closing in on me. While the European Union earlier this week refused to approve Google’s acquisition of DoubleClick on competitive grounds, opposition to the deal in the United States is coming from those concerned about privacy.

Several consumer advocacy groups, including the Public Interest Research Group and the Electronic Privacy Information Center, are worrying that with the acquisition of DoubleClick, Google will simply have too much information on us. This concern may set up a confrontation on Capitol Hill over just how much Google and other Internet services are entitled to know about us—and how much of that information they can share with others.

Up to now, Google has assumed that most Internet users would willingly take convenience over privacy. They figured we would be so grateful for their free services that we would overlook the fact that Google is selling information about us to advertisers.

Data miners like Google say that the information in the profiles they use to serve up ads is anonymous; it’s not Joel Dreyfuss they’re selling but Joe Doe, who happens to have all my likes and dislikes. But as the store of knowledge about me gets more complete and refined, there’s the danger that the information will become so specific that advertisers will know who we are as individuals.

And, of course, it’s not just advertisers that worry us. What about government agencies? The U.S. Congress and the Bush administration are wrestling over immunity for telephone companies that gave the government vast amounts of data on consumers without any of the required search warrants.

Some experts argue that privacy is just a concern of an older generation. They cite the exhibitionism on Facebook, MySpace, and YouTube as evidence that twenty-somethings are more about showing off their lives than keeping secrets. But even some of those free spirits have had to face reality when prospective employers started trolling social sites for information they left off their applications.

Better than any other large company, Google grasped the essence of computing on demand and leaped ahead of its rivals. Software as a service, which is what Google provides, simplifies the work lives of people who have easy access to broadband. The applications have been remarkably easy to learn and to use. You can find your mail, your news, or your documents wherever you can log into a broadband system. That’s a level of access still not available to most of the world’s people, but it’s already a sizeable market, as Google’s results show.

But the on-demand model requires an extraordinary level of trust. We may have railed against Microsoft’s dominance in the last decade, but our documents were in our own safekeeping, on our local hard drives, or in a corporate storage facility that we assumed was reasonably secure. What exactly does Google, Salesforce.com, or another Internet application provider do with my information, my documents, or my browser tracks? Google is fairly upfront: It will mine my data and serve up ads that reflect my interests. But do I want ads popping up to remind me or anyone who looks over my shoulder of topics that I’d rather not share? What data does Google provide about me to advertisers, to government, to anyone else?

The new wave of concern about privacy is a reasonable reaction to a new computing paradigm. There will be negotiations, lawsuits, maybe even legislation and, with luck, we will come out of this turmoil with a clearer agreement on what is public, what can be shared, and what should remain private.