Google has announced the launch of a free global Domain Name System (DNS) resolution service, simply called Google Public DNS. People can opt-in to use this as an alternative to their current DNS provider. You do not need a Google account to use it, and it is an independent service, meaning it does not depend on any other products.

Google says the service is part of its ongoing effort to make the web faster. This is an initiative that the company stresses time and time again. In its announcement, the company says:

Most of us aren't familiar with DNS because it's often handled automatically by our Internet Service Provider (ISP), but it provides an essential function for the web. 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.

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. 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. You can read about the specific technical improvements we've made in our product documentation and get installation instructions from our product website.

Privacy

Google says Google Public DNS complies with the company's main privacy policy. Google collects the IP address (temporarily), ISP, and location information (in permanent logs) to make the service "faster, better, and more secure."  They use the data to conduct debugging, analyze abuse, and improve prefetching. Any IP info is erased after 24 hours. No information collected is stored with the user's Google account, they don't share the data with anyone, and they don't use information with any other Google products.

Google has information available on setting up Google Public DNS on your computer or router at the Google Code Blog. The product page has additional info, and the FAQ page goes into support and technical information.

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