Google’s Need For Speed Leads to Public DNS

In their endless quest to push the web to the next level, Google has made some major moves. Even when the very infrastructure of the Internet itself has stood in their way, they have forged ahead and made their own path. For instance, Google Chrome came about because they didn’t feel any of the existing browser offerings was fit to carry the web into the future. It’s not really clear whether they really want to take over the browser market, but they definitely wanted to stir things up. Probably hoping that the existing browser developers would step their game up. Now, in a move that has many users raising an eyebrow, Google has launched their own public DNS service.

What is DNS?

DNS stands for Domain Name System. We all know what Domain Names are: google.com, blackweb20.com, bit.ly, twitter.com, etc. We type them every day to get where we need to go. These names only exist for the benefit of us humans. Our computers have absolutely no clue what a “twitter.com” is. This is where DNS comes into play. Every computer on the Internet is actually represented by a unique IP address and DNS maps that address to the names we are familiar with. So, instead of typing 72.32.147.165 in your web browser, you can just type blackweb20.com.

What is The Point?

Google wants to make the web faster. Each page that you view actually makes multiple DNS queries. This slows down your web browsing experience. Google, because they already index the web for search, feels that they can bring unique solutions to DNS problems.

Since Google’s search engine already crawls the web on a daily basis and in the process resolves and caches DNS information, we wanted to leverage our technology to experiment with new ways of addressing some of the existing DNS challenges around performance and security.

What About OpenDNS?

Many comparisons are being drawn between Google Public DNS and the well established DNS alternative OpenDNS. My problem with that is that the two pretty much have nothing to do with each other and OpenDNS founder David Ulevitch seems to agree. Google Public DNS is just potentially faster DNS. That’s it. There are no bells or whistles or added features.

OpenDNS provides a rich set of features to improve your DNS experience in addition to potentially making it faster. Malware / Botnet protection, Anti-Phishing, and a Web-based dashboard are just a few of the features available.

What About My Privacy?

Many people are afraid of the big bad Google and how much they know about us. I’m not one of them, but I can also see where some might be concerned. Google has your mail, your search habits, your social networking graph, your photos and documents, and probably a bunch of other stuff. Now, by implementing Google Public DNS, they will know about every single site you visit or link you click.

It seems Google is concerned about this as well and is quite clear in their privacy policy that they aren’t storing much for very long and what they do keep won’t e tied to any individual. For more information about Google Public DNS, including how to set it up, check out their introduction.