[ta223]

Don't worry, you can use DDG and still be tracked by Goolge! With content of some sort loaded from Google's servers on around 80% of all sites, this mostly happens without you doing anything. But if you're really concerned, just use Chrome and/or set your name servers to 8.8.8.8 and 8.8.4.4.

[MikeCapone]

Hmm, interesting point about the Google DNS servers. I'm not too familiar with DNS servers; anyone can give more details on how they could be used to track people? Does a DNS request contain enough information to allow for the kind of thing?

[Selfcommit]

Just piecing together known data here but...

My IP address requests a particular site form DNS, in theory that request could be recorded. Even if Google doesn't know that I'm at that IP (which they could have gotten from some other site I'm logged into (say Amazon)) they know that my particular ip address has requested certain sites. They can then serve ads to that IP based on context

[medde]

it is safe to assume that Google record IP information (among other things) from Google Adsense and Google Analytics... which you probably visit at least one site that use one or the other at least once a day..

[socillion]

DNS is a service that resolves a domain name to a specific IP address that handles requests for that domain, and is transparently invoked when visiting websites and other services.

See Google's FAQ: https://developers.google.com/speed/public-dns/faq#privacy

[Selfcommit]

That's a very well written FAQ.

Makes me feel much better about using their DNS.

[medde]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Name_server