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Google's Engineering Takeover of the Internet -- No "slow" DNS needed on GooglesNet
Submitted by Scott Cleland on Fri, 2009-12-04 10:54
As part of Google's previously announced plan to make the Web faster, Google announced yesterday a Google engineering alternative system to the Internet's current core, the Domain Name System or DNS.
This is a big deal. Google is essentially saying it can do a better faster job for the Internet than the current ICANN can. Listen to ICANN's self description:
In stark contrast, Google's entire business is controlling how most content is discovered on the Internet -- so Google's lone wolf re-engineering project to "make the web faster" would represent a massive change in how the neutral Internet works -- tantamount to a type of non-neutral engineering takeover of the neutral Internet. This is not an isolated Google Internet re-engineering event. It is part of Google's grander vision/ambition to single-handedly re-make the global Internet allegedly faster and more secure, for everyone.
Many may not know that how Google makes the search experience so fast is that Google literally makes a digital copy of all the literally trillion web pages in the world so that when you search for something you are searching Google's database copy of the Internet in Google's massive data centers, and not the Internet itself. Many also may not know that in just the last few years Google surprised most everyone in the world with how much new Internet infrastructure they have built and assembled for Google's use. As the recent Arbor Networks study showed, Google now carries more Internet traffic than any entity in the world. In sum, Google "making the web faster" is GoogleSpeak "code" for transferring Internet traffic off of the Internet and onto "GooglesNet" where Google can run it faster because it is all happening in their data centers and not on the global Internet itself. What relevance does all this have to an Open Internet, net neutrality, and the FCC's proposed Open internet regulations, which by the way effectively exempt Google from any openness, neutrality, or transparancy obligations?
My question is the broader Internet community awake out there?
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Google Public DNS is a DNS resolver, not a new protocol
Hi Scott,
I think you may be confusing the Domain Name System protocol itself with the DNS resolvers that operate under that protocol.
Google Public DNS is a public DNS resolver, just like Open DNS, Ultra DNS, and the thousands of other resolvers that all operate in accordance with DNS standards. None of these resolvers are an "alternative" to the DNS protocol – they all operate under that protocol.
To be clear, we follow DNS protocol to the record. And unlike some DNS resolvers, we do not perform any blocking, filtering, or redirection.
I would also note that Google Public DNS is not a "takeover" – it's completely opt-in, and meant for tech-savvy users who are able to and want to change the network settings on their computer or router.
We built Google Public DNS because we believe we've made some improvements to how DNS requests are handled that will make a user's web browsing faster, safer, and more reliable. We've shared the improvements we've made in our product documentation, and in the future we're planning to summarize and distribute more information, so that other DNS resolvers can improve their own services.
More information about what DNS is:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domain_Name_System
More information on Google Public DNS:
http://code.google.com/speed/public-dns/
Thanks,
Dan Martin
Google