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by rcoveson 2185 days ago
> What bad does someone expect to happen as a result of this.

Google is enriched when it can associate consumer IPs with DNS queries. Collecting that sort of information and compiling it into a advertising profile is part of Google's business. Giving state actors a view of that information part of Google's history.

Some people are just philosophically opposed to Google's information gathering mission. From such people's perspective, anything that directly helps Google learn something (or even make a little money) is bad.
1 comments
bluecmd 2185 days ago
I mean, could? Sure. They specifically claim not to though: https://developers.google.com/speed/public-dns/privacy
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rcoveson 2185 days ago
The question was posed, "What bad does someone expect to happen as a result of this[?]". So I'm putting on my least-charitable-to-Google hat. I'm not trying to make the most accurate predictions.

> They specifically claim not to though

That additional vector for monetization still exists. I stand by the statement that the ability to make those ad-relevant associations enriches Google. They are not necessarily monetizing that part of their empire right now, but they've pivoted other products in the past from "we're just trying to improve the Internet for it's own sake" to "we use this for advertising".

Privacy policies change all the time, often with little warning. There'll be a post here on HN if it happens and a bunch more techie folks will switch their DNS to 1.1.1.1 or something, but lots of people will just stick with 8.8.8.8, many of them unknowingly. Perhaps unknowingly because the Google address has become so common that FOSS projects are using it as a default.

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neurostimulant 2185 days ago
Yeah, but I got this uneasy feeling about relying too much on google services. Their policy can change in the future, and when it do change, we will scramble trying migrate to something else, only to find that the competitions in the space has been killed. Think about Reader, when they shut it down, there were no good alternatives for users to migrate to. Also google maps api, when they suddenly jack up the price and there were nothing the users could migrate to.
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