Powered by Google: The Public DNS

Powered by Google: The Public DNS

Posted by Garett Rogers

So, I’m currently using Google’s newest service called “Public DNS“. This experimental service was created with the intention of making the internet faster — and you know what? Unless it’s psychological, my internet seems to be a bit zippier.

DNS is what makes using domain names (google.com, zdnet.com, etc.) possible. When you type in www.google.com into your browser, DNS is what is responsible for translating it into an IP address — you can think of an IP address as a physical address that everything hooked up to a network needs in order to be connected.

I’m not exactly sure what makes this faster than my local DNS cache — but it’s not just that. This service is also an easy way to protect yourself from malicious hackers looking to serve up invalid DNS responses. Using Public DNS virtually guarantees that you will not fall victim to such an attack.

But what about privacy? Google is no doubt going to store, and use those DNS translation requests — now they can get some impressive aggregate data about almost anything that requires the internet. Does that worry me? Not really — you don’t need to log into anything to use this service, so the data they are collecting is relatively anonymous.

What are your thoughts?

Garett Rogers is employed as a programmer for iQmetrix, which specializes in retail management software for the wireless industry. See his full profile and disclosure of his industry affiliations.

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Goodbye, Dictionary.com...Hello, Google Dictionary

Posted by Christopher Dawson

And in the more-cool-resources-from-Google department, Google has formalized its dictionary offering. Although google.com/dictionary used to provide aggregated definitions for words from various dictionary resources online, it’s now a full-blown dictionary tool that leverages Google’s translation technology and provides concise definitions and synonyms.

Although Google’s attempt to compete with Wikipedia via its Knol offering has been a remarkably dismal failure for a company that tends to get things right, this is a tool that could displace plenty of other properties like dictionary.com and answers.com. Not only does it provide a really uncluttered interface, but the extensive translation tools are quite useful. While Google Translate is useful for passages or entire sites, often ELL students simply need to clarify a single word; Google Dictionary fills the bill.

Better yet, for those of us who have adopted Google Apps, users can star words and definitions and store them in their Google accounts for reference. While this seems a small thing, like most things Google, it may lend itself to sharing and classroom use in the future as the company expands this offering.

My youngest son recently mastered the dictionary. Guide words, alphabetizing, you name it. He can use a paper dictionary. Great. Guess what? The paper dictionary can’t translate the words he finds into 40 languages. It can’t offer synonyms and contextual sentences faster than he can get the dictionary off the shelf. And he can’t carry the Webster’s Dictionary of the English Language (Deluxe Edition) that I won in a spelling bee 20 years ago in his backpack. I really should have titled this post Goodbye Dictionary, shouldn’t I?

Google Accelerates Internet With Public DNS Service

By taking on Internet traffic direction, Google aims to make the Internet more responsive while also deepening its access to valuable traffic data.

By Thomas Claburn
InformationWeek December 3, 2009 04:20 PM 

Opening up a potentially vast source of business intelligence, Google on Thursday introduced a public Domain Name Service (DNS) resolver, a service that allows Internet users to rely on Google rather than their ISP to take them to the Web sites they wish to visit.

DNS is the Internet's equivalent of a phone directory: It takes domain names, like example.com, and translates them into associated numerical IP addresses (192.0.32.10, in the case of example.com) to connect the client's Web browser to the Web server at that address.

Google Public DNS aims to provide improved security (in the form of resistance of cache poisoning attacks but not content blocking or filtering), better performance, and "more valid results," a reference to ISPs that filter content or use NXDOMAIN redirection to monetize mistyped domain names.

"The average Internet user ends up performing hundreds of DNS lookups each day, and some complex pages require multiple DNS lookups before they start loading," explained Google product manager Prem Ramaswami in a blog post. "This can slow down the browsing experience. Our research has shown that speed matters to Internet users, so over the past several months our engineers have been working to make improvements to our public DNS resolver to make users' Web-surfing experiences faster, safer and more reliable."

Google is aware that its involvement with a core Internet protocol may prompt concerns from those already worried about the company's power. Its product documentation stresses that Google Public DNS is not a top-level domain service like what Verisign provides, is not an authoritative host for other domains or authoritative name service, and is not a filter of any kind.

In a blog post, Lauren Weinstein, co-founder of PFIR - People For Internet Responsibility and founder of PRIVACY Forum, notes that Google has established a separate Privacy Policy for Google Public DNS that promises to delete temporary logs -- which, unlike permanent logs, contain IP addresses associated with DNS queries -- within 24 to 48 hours.

"Google has obviously recognized the sensitivity of this issue," said Weinstein. "Their separate privacy policy for the Google Public DNS strikes me as utterly reasonable, particularly given its very rapid (24-48 hours) deletion of what I would consider to be the key privacy-sensitive data."
"I think overall, it's a good thing," said Cricket Liu, VP of architecture at network services company Infoblox, noting that Google Public DNS gives users with ISPs that perform NXDOMAIN redirection a way out, if they care enough to bother with reconfiguring their DNS settings.

Liu also says that most ISPs, as far as he was aware, do not publish a data retention policy for DNS queries. So in that respect, Google Public DNS could actually improve online privacy to some extent.

"All-in-all, this is probably a good thing, but like most good things there are some risks," said Karl Auerbach, CTO of at InterWorking Labs, an attorney, and former member of the board of directors of ICANN, in an e-mail. "I tend to find that the risks are of low probability."

In all likelihood, the technical hurdle of DNS re-configuration will limit adoption of Google Public DNS, at least until Google takes steps to automate the switchover process or until Google decides to make its DNS service the default DNS configuration in Chrome OS, due to be released next year.

But if Google Public DNS does become popular, Google will have access to very valuable information about Internet user's online activities.

"It's a given that Google is going to mine your query stream to figure out what you're looking up and they're going to do something with that data," said Liu. "They're going to use that data. They don't do this out of the goodness of their heart."

Auerbach suggests Google could generate a very efficient real-time feed of top queries by setting up a DNS server like Google Public DNS. This would allow Google to immediately track the performance of URLs in TV ads placed by advertising clients, for example, and to quickly adjust the ad campaign based on real-time feedback. He also suggests Google could use DNS queries to learn about the search keywords submitted to competing search engines like Microsoft's Bing.

Google Public DNS could improve Google Search or other Google services, Auerbach says, by giving the company access to the "dark Internet," Web pages not referenced by external links.

Furthermore, Google's pre-fetching of data from popular domains, Auerbach observes, will make those domains faster, a potential competitive edge for the more responsive sites.

Google has made "speed matters" something of a corporate mantra.

There's even the possibility that Google Public DNS could weaken the Internet Corporation of Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), the organization that oversees Internet administration.

"In another regard this announcement could lead to some intriguing changes in the dynamics of Internet governance and ICANN because, with a large user base, it gives Google the ability to deploy its own top level domains," he said. "Of course those would be visible only to the users of Google's DNS. But free premium Google provided content under any of those Google TLDs would certainly be a strong attractant for more users and start a snowball effect ultimately resulting in the obviation of ICANN. It is perhaps unlikely that Google would chose to do this, but there's nothing that prevents it."

InformationWeek and Dr. Dobb's have published an in-depth report on how Web application development is moving to online platforms. Download the report here (registration required).

Google Buys AppJet To Power Wave

The start-up's collaborative technology will be adapted to improve the way Google Wave handles group editing.

By Thomas Claburn
InformationWeek December 4, 2009 04:35 PM 

Google appears to be in a rush to get its holiday shopping done, having just acquired its fourth company in less than a month.

On Friday, AppJet, a start-up co-founded by an ex-Google employee, revealed that it had been bought by Google.

In October, Google CEO Eric Schmidt said his company would be looking more actively for acquisition targets. In 2007, Google acquired 16 companies. In 2008, it bought only two.

AppJet makes an online collaborative Word processing program called EtherPad that allows real-time collaborative authoring similar to what Google offers in Wave.

Fittingly, the company said that its EtherPad engineers would be joining the Google Wave team.

Google confirmed this: "Appjet, the company behind EtherPad, is a team of highly-talented entrepreneurs with deep expertise in real-time Web collaboration," said a Google spokesperson via e-mail. "Google and Appjet have a shared vision of how Web collaboration can benefit users, and we're excited to have the Appjet team contribute to the success of Google Wave."

While Wave and EtherPad appear to be alike in some respects, at least one EtherPad user claims that EtherPad handles collaborative editing better than Wave does.

AppJet says that the EtherPad site will remain functional through March 2010, though no new free public pads -- the company's term for EtherPad documents -- may be created.

After March 31, 2010, all pads and personal data will be deleted, the company says. Data in existing pads can be exported in various formats using the "Import/Export" tab.

Users of the Professional Edition will not be charged after today and those who downloaded the Private Network Edition can continue to use the software. The company will honor service and support contracts, though no new contracts will be offered.

EtherPad users who have supplied Appjet with e-mail addresses will receive Google Wave invitations before the end of the year, the company says.

Google's other acquisitions this year include On2, reCAPTCHA, AdMob, Gizmo5, and Teracent.