Google seems to be getting everywhere. They are there in just about every corner of our online life, and now they have taken a step further by launching
Google Public DNS. Google Public DNS aims at making the web faster for you, by using a high speed, public DNS server. Here’s what DNS does in simple words :
Say you type in the Wikipedia.org in your browser window. The DNS then converts the URL you typed into machine readable IP address and returns it to you. Only after the actual IP of the website is determined does the webpage begin loading for you.
OpenDNS has long since been considered the pioneer in the making the web faster by giving users a free, fast public DNS server with servers spread around the globe to reduce latency.
I’ve been using OpenDNS for the past two years for my needs, and needless to say the experience has been quite good. Not to forget the increase in speed while browsing the web. But today with the release of Google’s own DNS solution I was curious to see if it could beat the already fast service that OpenDNS provides.
Tests were made with the following bash linux script:
#!/bin/sh
for i in "lifehacker.com" "facebook.com" "dailyapps.net" "reddit.com" "google.com" "bbc.co.uk" "microsoft.com" "yahoo.com" "ebay.com"
do
for j in "4.2.2.2" "8.8.4.4" "208.67.222.222"
do
echo $j $i `dig @$j $i | grep Query | awk -F ":" '{print $2}'`
done
done
And here are the results :
As you can see Google DNS consistently was atleast two times faster than OpenDNS and even more faster than Level 3. Those of you in the U.S I believe shouldn’t see much performance difference between Google and Level 3.
For me personally, Google was always in the range 90-110ms while
OpenDNS was in the 200-210ms range. A Significant performance boost I must say.
Is Performance a tradeoff for Privacy?
Hmm it depends on how you look at it. Surely Google has a lot of information about you, and a DNS server will only allow them to gather more data about you. They could in theory gather information about all the websites you visit. Sounds like Big Brother ain’t it, except that Google makes it explicitly clear that
“Collected data includes IP address (up to 48 hours, to detect malicious behavior against the service), ISP information and geographic information (2 weeks each). The data is not correlated with your Google account in any way”
For more on what they log while using their DNS service, read the Google Public DNS
Privacy Policy.
So as things stand at the moment you don’t have to worry about Privacy Issues. But OpenDNS founder
David Ulevitch seems to have other concerns :
“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.
……
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. And of course, we always have protected user privacy and have never sold our DNS data.”
At the end of the day, its pure competition. Google has been entering a lot of verticals lately, in their quest to make the web a better place for everyone. They’ve a long way to go, before they can achieve their goals.
What does this mean for OpenDNS? Well guys, you’ve had the free run for the past three years, now you got to make OpenDNS even more faster. Competition is always a wake up call.
