Mail an article...

ZOMG!!! Google Offers its own DNS SERVER!!!1!

This has got to be one of the silliest tech articles I have ever read, written as it was to "warn" readers about evil plans Google has in its kitten and baby duck laden drive for world domination.

Disclosure: I regard google as liberal and therefore evil, not evil and therefore liberal, which is why I dislike them. But ultimately they are a tech company and tech companies are gonna do geeky things, and the top of the geeky things to do in terms of the complexity and sheer geekdom pyramid is establishing a DNS server.

Google has entered the domain name resolution business, part of its ongoing effort to control just about everything you do on the net.

This morning, the Mountain View Chocolate Factory unveiled the free Google Public DNS, a service that lets you resolve net domain names through Google-controlled servers.
Those bastards! Trying to control us by allowing computers to resolve names to IP numbers!

Definitely geeky. What does that mean?

The Internet is made up of servers with individual IP addresses who exchange packets based on those addresses. The Web is a service that uses the Internet to ask for and deliver the files that make up Web pages. DNS servers translate Web addresses to Internet addresses.

DNS - the Domain Name System - converts text urls into numeric IP addresses. This is typically handled by your ISP, but Google wants to keep the task to itself. It says this will bring your life more speed and more safety.
Google's explanation makes some sense. If someone has poisoned a DNS cache, who is better equipped to handle countermeasures than a search engine? ISPs just sell access. Google using a DNS server can help quickly clear up poisoned caches.

I'm sure that's a terrible thing. What is it?

Routers move the Internet Protocol packets around until they reach the destination server. If the router doesn't know how to forward a packet it sends out an inquiry. To avoid inefficiency routers keep a list of how to reach IP addresses they've served recently. Hackers and spammers sometimes are able to break into routers and substitute fake IP addresses or break into DNS servers and substitute fake IP addresses for URL lookups. When that happens they get to receive your online purchase credit card information and passwords instead of them going to the intended site.

"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," reads a blog post from Google product manager Prem Ramaswami. "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."
A silly bit by Google: Redirects are handled by web servers, which require a DNS query each time. Google having a DNS server won't speed this process up much. A DNS system is actually pretty passive. It doesn't do anything but respond to requests. It can't deliver content and it can't redirect.
Since 2005, a similar service has been available from a startup known as OpenDNS. One difference, Google says, is that its new service will not redirect you to landing pages if you mistype an address.

"Sometimes, in the case of a query for a mistyped or non-existent domain name, the right answer means no answer, or an error message stating the domain name could not be resolved," the company explains. "Google Public DNS never blocks, filters, or redirects users, unlike some open resolvers and ISPs."
Obviously, some DNS queries resolutions are run through a web server, which can then do redirects
Yes, that would seem to be a reference to OpenDNS, which redirects users to ad-laden pages when names don't resolve. Google, it seems, carefully avoided even mentioning advertising in announcing its Public DNS - it merely says it doesn't do "redirection" - but the subtext is there. In his own blog post, OpenDNS founder David Ulevitch seems to have heard the "a" word.
How totally evil. Ad. Those evil bastards! Engaging in a legitimate business. How awful!
He's right, however, in pointing out that even if Google isn't redirecting users to ads through the service, it should hardly be viewed in the way Google would have you view it. "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," Ulevitch writes. "To think that Google's DNS service is for the benefit of the Internet would be naive. They know there is value in controlling more of your Internet experience and I would expect them to explore that fully."
I would expect that, too, Google being a business and not a non-profit
Among other things, this gives Google access to even more of the web's data.

According to Google, it limits how long certain information is retained. Your IP address, it says, is stored but then deleted after 24 to 48 hours. "The temporary logs store the full IP address of the machine you're using. We have to do this so that we can spot potentially bad things like DDoS attacks and so we can fix problems, such as particular domains not showing up for specific users," reads its privacy page.
Limits are de rigueur in a DNS server. Google would be no exception holding to an internet protocol, except that they could tighten or loosen the limit. After all, it's their server.
Some geographic information and various other data is keep permanently. "We do keep some location information (at the city/metro level) so that we can conduct debugging, analyze abuse phenomena and improve the Google Public DNS prefetching feature."

And deliver local ads.

Google also says it will not combine DNS data with data the company collects elsewhere. "We don't correlate or combine your information from these logs with any other log data that Google might have about your use of other services, such as data from Web Search and data from advertising on the Google content network. After keeping this data for two weeks, we randomly sample a small subset for permanent storage."

We applaud Google for at least providing a detailed description of the service's data collection policy. But as we said, well, just last week: "Do we really want another monoculture?"
To which the obvious answer is: Huh?

Monocultures develop because increasing numbers of people find they make sense. This is why the Muslim world has developed an indigenous rap music, and you can go to McDonalds almost anywhere in the world these days. There were German mothers in our toddler playgroup in Frankfurt. At least once a month they'd suggest meeting for lunch at the local McDonalds, the one with the indoor playground and the fabulous French fries.

As Ulevitch puts it: "It's not clear that Internet users really want Google to keep control over so much more of their Internet experience than they do already - from Chrome OS at the bottom of the stack to Google Search at the top, it is becoming an end-to-end infrastructure all run by Google, the largest advertising company in the world. I prefer a heterogeneous Internet with lots of parties collaborating to make this thing work as opposed to an Internet run by one big company."
Who the hell wouldn't, but unless there is money in it and an idea that hasn't been encumbered by patents or copyright law, Google is the only game in town.

What about Yahoo, or Bing?

Google is even building its very own physical internet. We can safely say the company is building its own servers, its own Ethernet switches, its own underwater comms cables, its own worldwide collection of brick and mortar data centers, its own truck-em-anywhere-you-want-em mobile data centers, and perhaps even its own Data Center Navy.
There are real life, perfectly acceptable reasons why Google would want to do this.

Doesn't this make the overall system more robust? That way if an attack takes down one part of the web, we can use this other part to go around the problem?

There are serious data ownership and privacy implications. Google reportedly is looking at establishing offshore data centers powered by solar and wave motion. That would potentially put them out of the range of laws concerning privacy and data use. Think of that when you see their offers to host all your company's data, programs, your email and your file backups.

This morning, at the Supernova tech pow-wow in downtown San Francisco, Googler Craig Walker offhandedly referred to this as "the Google network."

In a recent presentation, Google said it is intent on expanding this infrastructure between one million and 10 million servers, encompassing 10 trillion (1013) directories and a quintillion (1018) bytes of storage. All this would be spread across "100s to 1000s" of locations around the world.

"The implications are a little disturbing," one Reg reader said in response to Google Public DNS. "This could easily be a valid attempt by Google to deal with certain holes in the extant DNS infrastructure. However it could just as easily be a bridge too far."

What happens, he asked, if Google starts preconfiguring Chrome OS and Android for its Public DNS service?
So deconfigure it. Jeez, do I have to think of everything?
The company will tell you - time and again - that it's merely interested in making the web a better place for netizens everywhere. But as it works towards this ostensible goal, it's also doing its best to control, yes, just about everything.
Google wants to turn a buck, which is their Gawd given right to do.
Which is only what you'd expect from a Fortune 500 company.

Huh? Mr. Wife works for a Fortune 500 company, and they think in terms of working within the world-that-is, not changing or controlling it.

Google will also tell you that its leaders are saints - that they would never use this sort of ubiquity for evil. But even if Sergey, Larry, and Eric are morally superior to everyone else in the world - which is just as ridiculous as it sounds - what happens when new leaders arrive?
Only the Good Lord is morally superior to everyone else. If Eric, et al have said or hinted they are morally superior to everyone else, then they are wrong and they should told they are wrong, and why.
For some, claims of saintliness are reason enough to wonder if the company has gone much too far. ®

Posted by: badanov 2009-12-06

http://www.rantburg.com/poparticle.php?ID=285018