You need sources for a paper due tomorrow, so you turn to Google Scholar. A movie title slips your mind, so you turn to Google Search. You need to know the best walking route to a new gelato place on West 38th, so you turn to Google Maps.

Google is taking over. But Google is not a kind, hip bunch of kids looking to provide a free service to the masses as we once thought. No, its goal is to see what we find popular and purchase control over it, as it did with YouTube and more than 80 other companies. Or, if it can’t buy a company, Google makes its own version, such as gTalk’s video capabilities, which are modeled after Skype.

Soon everything we love will be owned or made by Google. All areas of the Web are accessible, which seems to lead to greater freedom of information. But the Web is filtered. Companies can pay to have their site listed at the top of searches. While it is possible to view all links listed, most of us are either in a hurry or too lazy to do so. We assume that the first few links are the most popular because they are genuinely reliable, so we rarely glance past the first two pages.

Through this veiled control, Google has the ability to influence our intake of information and the formation of our ideas and beliefs through their services. Google even has the potential to fully manage our access to information, thereby brainwashing us.

Another possibly more terrifying aspect of this company is that they do not delete anything. So, one day when you are running for public office, we will find out about all of those embarrassing e-mails in which you use “u,” “4” and “l8er.” Even deleted e-mails can be accessed internally, and only a subpoena is required to ask Google for their records. Even this basic roadblock does not guarantee privacy, as Google has databases all over the world, some not subject to U.S. laws.

Does Google’s predictive abilities in Gmail, Search, and other services scare anyone else? The suggested advertisements are so spot-on because the company collects data from your past e-mails and searches to predict your habits as a consumer. This data is then stored and added to a database that correlates e-mails and searches. Google can predict what we will search and suggest what we should purchase. We often listen to its suggestions without a second thought.

At this rate, it won’t be long before Google effectively buys out many companies on the web and other search engines give up, giving Google complete control. Even worse, our lives are so dependent on it that we rely on it for almost everything. We research papers online, read the news, shop, access music and entertainment online and talk to each other online. Google has access to nearly every 0 and 1 that makes up our lives.

Clearly, may finally be time to head for the woods and make hats out of tin foil. Google is searching for us.