Why would Google offer a public DNS service?
Because it’s a cheap and easy way to track attention today and in the future. (Almost) anything you do on the internet requires DNS queries. And when I say anything I don’t mean just web browsing (HTTP). I mean email, ftp, and most other internet applications.
Google wants to know what is going on on the net. They want to know of new sites. The want to know sparks in attention regarding a specific domain or service. Google Analytics does that -to a certain extent.
But if they could track all (or most, or a large portion) of DNS requests, they would be able to know in (almost) real time where is the global attention focused. They would also be able to track changes in the internet topology: if I move my data center to a new ISP, they will know, since all the IPs of my servers would change. Or, if users start using BING, they will know. They will also know, if, for example, the usage pattern of api.paypal.com has changed in the last hours or days.
Oh, one more thing: a DNS service that big can be turned into a cache cow: Google, already have a service called Google AdSense for Domains, my guess is they will extend it to be used for misspelled domain names.
And, in case some new, exotic service appears, they will be able to spot it and estimate it’s traffic…
Google public DNS service is a good move from their part. But I don’t like it. They have started to scare me.
First time they scared me too…
p.s: I like the new theme
I don’t think it’s that bad for us, Google users, to use an open DNS service from Google. As the article points out, most of a large part of the internet’s data flow they control already via all the mentioned services.
There has been always too much movement to Google, but lately with the Go language, the real time search, the Google business centre (which adds GeoADS framework for free), etc is going Crazy imho.
As for Bing’s grow it’s a good thing so far for us. I’d rather 5 big search engines than one (if I could).
If we accept that all military communications surveillance operations ceased the moment Bill Gates “created personal computing” (I don’t) then we MUST ask why, Windows NT security product manager Scott Culp, when MS were accused of letting NSA use a key to spy on users by Fernandes (link to Wired.com post) who discovered that a second secret key is labeled “_NSAKEY.”, replied that, “the key is a Microsoft key — it is not shared with any party including the NSA.”
Yeah right ….
Just like microsoft and in fact any other big operation, google are under constant surveillance and strict control by the ‘Big Boys’.
Believe it or not Big Brother is getting older and wiser.
You could say they already had, but they definitely crossed the “creepy line” with this one.