Google News, Inside.

Google DNS

Posted at 6:51pm EST on 12/03/2009

Google has officially launched it’s own public DNS service. Just like OpenDNS, Google is aiming to do the same thing.

One thing I have liked about being on the West Coast of the US is that I can use 4.2.2.1 and 4.2.2.2 for my DNS. It’s easy to remember and always fast — these servers are owned by Verizon. Google is setting out to do something similar.

Google’s servers are 8.8.8.8 and 8.8.4.4, very memorable IP addresses. That’s one problem I had with OpenDNS, I could never remember their server’s IP addresses, so I just stopped using them.

Google’s Public DNS server is their second initiative to help reshape and speed up the web’s infrastructure.

So why should this scare you? For most people, DNS is something that they don’t even realize is actually happening. It’s a process of taking a name, like google.com, and resolving it to an IP address, where the website actually resides. So why would this matter? This matters because whoever is hosting the DNS, where you are pointing to, can actually gather data about where you go on the web. A company can suddenly track information about you and who you are.

Let’s look at today now. Google already knows what you’re searching for and knows where you’re going from there. But what if Google also knew exactly where you were going when you weren’t searching before going somewhere. That could be terribly scary to some folks.

But, Google has indeed said, “…after 24 hours, we erase any IP information. For more information, read the Google Public DNS privacy page. ” So they are saying that they will erase the data, but who knows what they are actually doing with this data.

Use are your own discretion.