Why Google DNS Is a Big Deal
Google has decided to get into the DNS business. Well, more specifically it has decided to get into the DNS resolution business. To most people DNS is some arbitrary networking term that they may have heard used once or twice when they were setting up their high speed internet accounts, or maybe not at all.
In the case of the internet, all of the computers directly connected to it are assigned a number (IP Address). And they communicate with each other via these numerical addresses. But it would be really difficult for a human to remember to type in 192.168.1.1 to go to Google.com for example. Instead we memorize common language names like "google.com". So there needed to be a system out there that would allow us humans to use common language, but translate those requests into numerical addresses that machines can deal with easier. That is what DNS does. If you type in google.com your computer *first* goes to a DNS server which responds to your computer with "google.com = 192.168.1.1" and *then* your computer actually goes to that numerical address.
So, why would Google want to start running a menial DNS server service? And what makes it a big deal?
- Today, it means nothing. It's free and fast to you but with little benefit to Google....yet
- However, you'll notice in my example above that the *first* place your computer went was the DNS server, not the actual destination you wanted to go to. By being in the middle of all those transactions Google can now determine ways to insert itself (or "assert" itself as the case may be)...and there are lots of ways indeed.
- They can offer you a little assistance if they like when you type in a invalid domain name. By giving you a suggestion as to what you might have meant to type in. While showing you an advertisement of course
- They can offer filtering services such as providing filters to restrict your childrens computer to only certain types of websites
- They can offer business filters for employee monitoring/restrictions and provide reporting on your employees visitation habits
- They can highlight sponsored sites to you when you when you type in a bad address that are relevant to what you meant to type
- They can utilize the data they are gathering to provide general behavioural analytics to marketing companies (no identifying personal data of course)
- The list goes on
The point, is that once you put Google in the middle of every web transaction you partake in there is a lot of opportunity for Google to monetize that traffic. That's not necessarily a bad thing by the way. If the benefits they can come up with outweigh their intrusions then what do I care? I'm not a paranoid fear mongerer, so no conspiracy theories will be forthcoming from me.
And by the way, it's very likely that you are *already* in this exact situation. Charter, and many other ISP's regularly setup their DNS servers, that by default you are using, to intercept bad address entries and make suggestions to you. I just don't expect that they'll figure out how to monetize it as well as Google will.
If you want to give it a shot you can find instructions for doing so here:
Matt Ridings - @techguerilla
5 Comments
You list several ways to monetize DNS, which are all correct and feasible, and which other DNS companies employ (OpenDNS is a big one). These companies do offer value-add features to DNS such as filtering, blocking, and suggestions. This is nothing new about these services and their monetization strategy and some of these have been around for a few years. Nothing new there.
The issue is, and this is what Google is trying to solve, that these value-added services literally break the fundamental underpinnings of the Internet.
An example:
I try to send an email to "myfriend@gmmail.com". This is an obvious typo. If I use a DNS resolver that tries to correct my typos, my mail client will ask the DNS server what "gmmail.com" resolves to. This doesn't resolve to anything so the "friendly" DNS server returns *its* IP address. A correct DNS resolver should have said, "You messed up buddy. Try again," but my mail client thinks it has the correct IP address and will try to post my email to that server. This is the wrong thing to do. My client needs that error message that says "gmmail.com" doesn't resolve so I can do something about it.
On Google's DNS intro (http://code.google.com/speed/public-dns/docs/intro.html), Google is very explicit about what they are going to do with the DNS and that is only what the DNS standards allow them, and that is a Good Thing. The relevant line from their intro is this: "Google Public DNS never blocks, filters, or redirects users, unlike some open resolvers and ISPs." Also see here (http://code.google.com/speed/public-dns/privacy.html) to see what they plan to do with the data they collect. They have nothing up their sleeve.
What Google is trying to do is provide a very fast, extremely redundant, insanely reliable service that will allow people to use the Internet faster. Having people use the platform on which Google makes its money more efficiently is what Google is after. A faster web means more searches made and more ads shown and that is what Google wants.
This is an indirect optimization to their revenue stream, not something they will monetize directly.
I never mentioned trying to "correct" your typos. Simply redirecting your request to an assumed intention would be a very bad thing for a lot of reasons. A *web* request which returns a "Cannot find server" for example would not be redirected to where it thinks you might have made a mistake...a "results" page would be displayed instead with suggestions of what you *might* have meant. This results page would be nothing more than a google search result for the most part. Displaying that result page just gave google another "hit" and opportunity to advertise that it otherwise would not have gotten. This is how it's primarily done at large ISP's anyway assuming Google at some point decides to follow suit.
Second, the reason Google is different from OpenDNS or any other DNS resolver is that it is making DNS a front of mind item for the general public, not just tech geeks. When is the last time you saw an article in the New York Times about someone offering a public DNS resolver? I didn't say it was a new concept (actually, I said just the opposite). The difference is volume, pure and simple.
Third, your example about email isn't appropriate since no DNS resolver that I know of would take a request for a DNS MX record and simply redirect it to somewhere else. At least I hope noone does, if so I'd avoid their DNS servers like the plague since that's a major security breach. This could definitely happen with other applications however if you were using one of the public DNS services making "A" record assumptions.
Fourth, do you have some crystal ball into Google's plans? How could you possibly know whether or not Google intends to monetize this service directly? I heavily dispute your statement that "Google is very explicit about what they are going to do with the DNS". Could you point me to a reference for that? I haven't seen anything to indicate their future intentions, only their current intentions...which as I stated was to provide a fast, free service to you with little benefit to them. I've seen nothing that states what they *won't* do in the future. It could exist, I just don't know about it. It's all about adoption right now. I don't know their future, for all I know they could leave the service as-is and never touch it again. What I do know however is what it makes *possible*, and that's what the article is about.
Lastly, my personal opinion in the short term is that it's primarily about *control*. If you get enough people using your DNS you can stop a lot of these ISP's who are currently pointing you to Yahoo search results when you mistype an address. It's not always about doing something yourself, sometimes it's about stopping others from doing something to you.
P.S. - Hopefully you'll take this for what it is, a learning debate for myself, and not an argument.
On your first point, it seems that you did mention "correcting" typos, at least to my interpretation of your third bullet point above (i.e., "They can offer you a little assistance..."). I also may not been clear when I said "correct your typo" as I was paraphrasing which was my fault. What I was referring was the same thing you are it seems: type in a domain name that is not found and get shown a list of results.
On your second point, I see in your last paragraph you did mention that the end user was probably already in this situation. The reason I mentioned the existence of these value-add companies already was leading into my point about why Google feels these are bad for the Internet. I didn't mean to imply that you were felt these were new concepts.
On your third point, this is precisely how DNS works for resolving MX requests. If a query for the MX records fails, which it will on the IP address that resolvers like OpenDNS return, the DNS standard then dictates to fall back to the A record for that domain, which will be the IP address of an OpenDNS (probably web) server. The mail agent will then try to open up the SMTP port at the IP address, which will probably fail, but that is just because OpenDNS doesn't have a mail server at that IP address. Other resolvers may not be as kind...
For example, with my DNS pointing to OpenDNS's servers, a request for the MX record of a garbage url (like "asdgasdf.com") returns NXDOMAIN status (i.e., "non-existent domain"). By the standards, the next step is to open up the SMTP port on the server returned by the A record, which OpenDNS has conveniently given us an IP address for even though it doesn't exist!
On the fourth point, I and anyone else for that matter can never predict the future, but Google Public DNS *does* have a privacy policy ( http://code.google.com/speed/public-dns/privacy.html ). If they violate this policy, which dictates exactly what they will be doing with it, I would be immensely surprised. It also might be illegal to violate, but I'm not a lawyer, so I could be mistaken on that.
I'm not sure if you've read the intro and the FAQ fully, but the whole impetus behind this project is to provide a solid and *standards compliant* DNS resolver, and monetizing in the manner you set out goes exactly against their mission statement for this product.
In regards to MX requests, two things; 1) Yes, you can fallback to an A record...in the *same* domain. That's a very different beast than making an assumption about the domain name itself and then redirecting. 2) The method you describe at OpenDNS (I'll assume you're correct) would insure that I would never use the service as it could lock up email in retry loops for days instead of simply failing immediately so that the sender knows it doesn't exist.
Is your argument here that because some others do it badly that Googles *only* intention now and in the future is to be the ones who "do it right" simply for our benefit? If so we'll simply have to agree to disagree. This notion of altruistic savior doesn't fly with me. And so we're clear, I don't think making money is a bad thing. Money does not equal bad, or ill-intentioned. My computer right now is pointed at their DNS, obviously I don't have an issue with them or the service.
I think where we diverge in our thinking is where you say "the whole impetus behind this project is to provide a solid and *standards compliant* DNS resolver". From my perspective, the whole impetus, behind any project, at any company...is money. We don't yet know how Google plans on doing that, this article was and is an attempt at thinking through possible strategies (of which I think there are a great many). I think it's a brilliant move and thus a "big deal"....but I think that from a business opportunity perspective.
I think (hope) it's to make money. That could be as simple as hosting a "Non pubilc DNS" paid service later on, to the more complex examples, to ones that haven't even crossed my mind. But the objective is the same.
I think we've pretty much exhausted the topic. I take your points, and you've definitely made me go a little deeper in thinking through some of the topics. And hey, you definitely enlightened me on why I wouldn't want to use OpenDNS :)
I absolutely think they are in this for the money and is the *true* root of this initiative, I just don't think they are going to *directly* monetize this particular service (that is place ads or direct to you a search results page). As I stated in my first comment, a faster web benefits Google. DNS resolving is often a large proportion of the time it takes to fetch something from the Internet and Google has proven that slow response on the Internet equals lower revenues (however it is measured in the case). This absolutely is something that could affect their bottom line, so we are in full agreement there.
What we (cordially) disagree on is that they are going to do what ISPs and OpenDNS do with having a search results page on mistyped URLs or monetize it in a user-visible way.
On the privacy policy issue, my point is that if they want to monetize DNS by showing a search results page on mistyped URLs, they'll need to do a lot more data gathering since they will be showing ads and people will want proof how many times there are ads are shown and clicked, amongst other things.
Anyways, I've enjoyed hearing your opinions on this and I'm glad that the guts of the Internet are getting some airtime.
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