Remember that rumor a while back that Google was going to build its own version of the Internet? It turns out that the idea might not be so far-fetched after all.

Last month, Google revealed that it was working on its own protocol that could perhaps one day replace HTTP, dubbed SPDY. Today, Google announced that it’s going after another fundamental piece of the Internet: DNS.

Google has launched what they’re calling Google Public DNS. Here’s how and why Google says they’re attacking the issue:

“You could think of it as the switchboard of the Internet, converting easy-to-remember domain names — e.g., www.google.com — into the unique Internet Protocol (IP) numbers — e.g., 74.125.45.100 — that computers use to communicate with one another.

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.

As people begin to use Google Public DNS, we plan to share what we learn with the broader web community and other DNS providers, to improve the browsing experience for Internet users globally. The goal of Google Public DNS is to benefit users worldwide while also helping the tens of thousands of DNS resolvers improve their services, ultimately making the web faster for everyone.”

While “speed” might indeed be the end result for users, data is immensely valuable to Google as a company that is increasingly all about gathering more and more information from multiple channels in order to serve better advertising. If you want to try Google DNS for yourself, there’s already a site that will tell you how to do it, complete with toll-free telephone support.

It’s going to be yet another interesting piece of the Google puzzle to keep an eye on.

Tags: DNS, Google

Original post:
The Next Phase of Google’s Internet: Google Public DNS