Tech Blog

[#1]

This morning (one of) the big stories on the tech wires is that Google is offering their own DNS services-Official Google Blog: Introducing Google Public DNS-which is part of their efforts to speed up the web (along with giving site owners tools to speed up the load times of their sites). Google provides good, easy to follow, directions on the Google Public DNS page-Using Google Public DNS. So, Google is making it easy to switch to their DNS, should you? Maybe so.
Here's the premise of having larger, public DNS systems. Your ISP, by default, gives you automatic DNS settings so when you try to do anything on the Internet, the app knows where to go. When you type google.com or futureshop.ca into your address bar it looks up the actual IP address through the ISP's DNS. This is all well and good, and works 99.9% of the time, but ISP DNSes are notoriously slow to update (like if you buy a new domain or change your website's DNS settings) and often don't have huge capacity behind them. Enter open, public DNS. The first provider, that I know of, was OpenDNS-OpenDNS | Internet Navigation And Security-who offer not only larger capacity DNS servers around the world, but also protection from phishing scams and domain name typos. I've been using them for years now and, yes, I noticed right away that sites loaded faster, email send/receive was faster, and essentially everything to do with using the Internet was faster. Just because I didn't have to wait as long for the answer to come back from DNS.
As far as I can tell, OpenDNS has been very successful at what they do and are getting revenue by selling packages that offer more features and security (I use the free one and it's just fine and, in fact you don't need to sign up for anything to start using it). Now Google is getting into the game with a "test" of Google Public DNS, which works on the same principle as OpenDNS, except that it's Google and it doesn't have all the security protections that OpenDNS has.
Should you try it? Yeah, give it a shot. Honestly it can't hurt and I'm already using it (with OpenDNS as a back up). Is this a good thing? That is a bigger, and stickier, question. If you control the DNS, you control where people go when they want to visit websites. There is implicit trust that DNS servers are genuine, which is why when they are compromised by hackers it's a huge deal. So Google or OpenDNS could poison the DNS records to redirect people to a site different than what the site owners intend and you'd never know it. Would they? Probably not. For now, OpenDNS and Google are both doing something helpful for Net users. Using either of their services you should find your surfing to be a touch faster (a noticeable touch). Give it a shot and let me know what you think.
Update: Just as I was about to post this, David Ulevitch (founder of OpenDNS) posted his thoughts on Google DNS-OpenDNS Blog » Some thoughts on Google DNS. David gives some excellent and thoughtful commentary that I think is certainly worth the read.

[#2]

I'm leary of giving Google any more of my data than it already has. I've been using OpenDNS for quite some time - and the fact that they've restored SmartCache to the free service again means I'll be sticking with them for while. Keeping everything with Google is far too many eggs in one basket.

[#3]

I have to agree with Graham here.

Google has actually become a far more powerful company than I think anyone realized (or realizes), and I don't think anyone realizes just how far reaching they are now (although some are starting to get a pretty good idea).  They literally have fingers spread in every direction and if anything happens to the data being stored on their servers... I can only imagine.  And with the upcoming Chrome OS, it's only going to get worse.

Crazy... it used to be that everyone used to complain like crazy about Microsoft.  Now we have Apple who has become even more protectionistic and Google which has more of our information than anyone anticipated and still no one is really taking issue with it.

To me, this is all scary and to hear of Google wanting to do even more and getting even more of my information is actually making me want to close my Gmail account (that I rarely use anyhow) and cease to use all Google services.  Maybe it's time to start using Bing as my primary search engine afterall.  Too bad Metacrawler is no longer the search tool it used to be.

[#4]

Krypto and Graham you both bring up very valid concerns. I don't think I'd go as far as not using Google services anymore, but I'm thinking that OpenDNS is where I'm going to stay. I haven't experienced anything better using Google DNS vs OpenDNS, so i'm back to OpenDNS where I like the given feature better.

I wonder how much push back Google is going to get...and I mean in a month or two, not right away. 

[#5]

I'm not saying I'm going to leave all of my Google services, but it's at the point where it may be starting to get a little scary. 

[#6]

Thinking about it I have alot of google myself; google phone, google web browser, google search, google home page, google email, google wave, google voice is coming to canada soon, and now google dns.. Wow. I should just throw google OS in the mix.

 Whilst having all of these services from google however I have not run into an issue that would make me think about not using google. 

[#7]

The thing with DNS is that in order for it to be effective it absolutely must be a distributed system. Having everyone (or even a vast majority of us) directing our traffic through a single point of failure (whether it's GoogleDNS or OpenDNS) is a Very Bad Thing™. I think Google and OpenDNS realize that. They both seem interested in providing a good internet experience, so hopefully we'll see a few more entrants into the public DNS field to keep things stable. Worst case scenario you can always head back to your ISP's DNS (shudder).

[#8]

Exactly Graham, which is why I think what I am going to try is to have OpenDNS as my #1 and 2 DNS and Google as #s 3 and 4. If all of those fail, I think there would be a much bigger issue going on!

Yes, ISP DNS servers are notoriously horrendous. I've had to wait an extra half day (or more) for my ISP to pick up DNS changes I've made (say when moving a site), whereas often OpenDNS has had the changes in 30 minutes or less.