Google Wants to Speed Up the Web: Launches Its Own DNS Service

[app103]

Google just launched the Google Public DNS. Just like OpenDNS, Google Public DNS will allow users to bypass their ISPs Domain Name Servers (DNS). DNS servers are, in many respects, the backbone of the Internet. DNS allows you to type a domain name like www.senate.gov into a browser instead of a machine-readable IP number like http://156.33.195.33/. Google argues that it wants to give consumers an alternative to their ISPs' DNS services in order to make the Internet "faster, safer and more reliable."

According to Google product manager Prem Ramaswami, the company's engineers have been working to improve DNS over the last few months. Instead of performing DNS lookups on an ISP's DNS server, Google will use its data-center and caching infrastructure to resolve these domain names.

After SPDY (an which augments HTTP), this is Google second major project that touches upon the core infrastructure of the Web.

http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/google_launches_google_public_dns_opendns_competitor.php

[nosh]

OpenDNS founder David Ulevitch's take on Google DNS.


A comparison of access times for several countries, Google seems to be fastest for most non-US users.

[mouser]

Thanks for the link Nosh -- that was a nice piece by Ulevitch. 

[mouser]

Wired.com's take on it:
http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2009/12/geez-google-wants-to-take-over-dns-too/

"We get it, Google. You are smart. You can do anything better than anyone else (except say social networking and online video). We get it already. But you are starting to get annoying, and you won’t be running my DNS anytime soon, no matter how nice your privacy promises are."

[zridling]

Not so fast, Google isn't taking over DNS, just providing yet another alternative that already being offered by several other companies. Isn't this kind of competition good for the web? More services, better web experience, more choice. As Ulevitch noted, most people are unaware they can switch their DNS at any time.

[gexecuter]

Pretty soon Google will be the web 

[lanux128]

big news by Google, add these numbers 8.8.8.8 and 8.8.4.4 to try the new DNS service. btw, DownloadSquad posted about a good tool to compare DNS servers: NameBench

• http://www.downloadsquad.com/2009/12/03/speed-up-your-internet-dns-lookup-time-with-namebench/

[rgdot]

Chrome OS, SPDY, golang, now this.
Historical lessons in 'all things for all people' are rarely a success. May be google can be different but may be not.

[J-Mac]

I haven't looked at it or read anything else about it yet, but no doubt Google has added their own error referral page for misspelled URLs, like all the others.

Jim