Google Starts Public DNS Project

Google is introducing their own public DNS (domain name system) today named Google Public DNS. DNS is basically the Internet service that converts a web address (i.e. searchengineland.com) to an IP address of a server.

Google says in many cases, DNS can be slow and we all know how much Google is obsessed with speed these days. Google hopes that their DNS service will be super fast, faster than the other out there.

For more information on how to use Google’s Public DNS, see the Google Code Blog.

Google added:

As people begin to use Google Public DNS, we plan to share what we learn with the broader web community and other DNS providers, to improve the browsing experience for Internet users globally. The goal of Google Public DNS is to benefit users worldwide while also helping the tens of thousands of DNS resolvers improve their services, ultimately making the web faster for everyone.

Postscript: I spoke with a Google representative about this. In short, Google is really not storing specific IP information for over 48 hours, I recommend you look at this page for what Google is storing exactly. I am told the Electronic Frontier Foundation is very supportive of this privacy policy, which is good.

Google also said they have no current plans to give people a way to block certain sites or hijack the DNS queries like other DNS providers currently offer. They made it clear to me that this is completely about speeding up the Internet and not about data collection or hijacking results. Exactly how much faster is Google’s DNS service on average? Google wouldn’t say but they want us to give it a try and make our own decision.

Postscript #2: The OpenDNS Blog responded to this Google News. I’d like to highlight one piece of the long blog post:

Third, Google claims that this service is better because it has no ads or redirection. But you have to remember they are also the largest advertising and redirection company on the Internet. To think that Google’s DNS service is for the benefit of the Internet would be naive.