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I don’t understand the downvotes. Google has a long history of killing projects. Of all the public DNS to trust, why does anyone have confidence in Google? B

I don’t understand the downvotes. Google has a long history of killing projects. Of all the public DNS to trust, why does anyone have confidence in Google? Because they’re big? Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me 1500 times...

xyst 6y ago
https://killedbygoogle.com/ https://killedbygoogle.com/ Per this site that tracks dead google projects, thus far they are at 220.
beisner 6y ago
There are two classes of Google products: ones that are small user applications, and ones that are core infrastructure internally and externally. As far as I know, only the former have a reputation for being EOLed. DNS is the latter. Google’s RSS reader was the former.
- willis936 6y ago
  The future is uncertain. Google has a history of canceling services and gives no signs of changing their behavior. Even if they made public acknowledgments hand waving “oh it’s these services not those other ones”, why would I fee any better? Google needs to spend a lot of time building trust. They don’t have it.
  - beisner 6y ago
    Any service they have Enterprise contracts for they are extremely unlikely to shut down.
    - willis936 6y ago
      Is there any assurance? Why would anyone trust FAANGs?
  - Spooky23 6y ago
    I have a coworker who is angry that Nissin Original Cup of Noodles eliminated the dried pea that was in the ramen. I think that happened a decade ago. Very tragic, but things change. The nerd rage over Google Reader, etc is similar.
- coddle-hark 6y ago
  Just a few months ago there was a leaked email from Google execs talking about how Google Cloud needed to start making more money or it would be shuttered within a few years. It’s pretty simple really. Google acts like a VC — place lots of bets on new projects in the hope that they’ll blow up and either a) start making adwords-scale profits or b) markedly increase adwords profits. Projects that don’t do either of those things are killed. The question is: Does 8.8.8.8 markedly increase adwords profit?
jsnell 6y ago
Because you made a zero effort joke that has been worn to the absolute bone by people repeating it thousands of times per year in HN comments, rather than at least putting in a bit of thought as to what the risk is for this service. Here's a quick attempt: Track record: 8888 has been running for more than ten years. Popularity: It appears to be incredibly widely used; e.g. a research paper from 2013 claimed it was serving 7% of all end user DNS queries, and Wikipedia claims that in 2018 it answered a trillion DNS requests per day (i.e. 10M qps). Business value: It is true that there is no direct revenue here. But I'm pretty sure that the original reason for launching it was defensive. A lot of Google's networking projects have clearly been driven by trying to ensure that users can connect straight and reliable to Google's services with no interference from middleboxes, since every request lost to interference is also lost ad revenue. Crappy ISP DNS servers that serve spam pages instead of NXDOMAIN are a pretty big vector here.
- willis936 6y ago
  It’s not a joke. It’s a question of trust and authority. “Google DNS has been running for 10 years” does not negate Google’s management behavior or change the inherent risk of a free running for-profit entity being considered a DNS authority. You calling it a tired joke doesn’t change these things.
- acdha 6y ago
  On the business value front, I’d also bet that they see value from the data visibility front since that gives them a chance to identify malware and phishing domains early and the terms of service appear to allow aggregate activity data mining. It’s not as precise as Google Analytics, of course, but it works on many things which don’t have JS beacons and I’d be surprised if they couldn’t find a good deal of useful information from that stream.
- drewbug01 6y ago
  > Track record: 8888 has been running for more than ten years. I understand the point you're trying to make here - but long-lived products are still shut down by Google, fairly often. Here's a list of some Google products that have been / were around for 10 years or more before being killed (or are slated to be killed soon): - Chrome Apps - Cloud Print - Fusion Tables - Youtube Video Annotations - Google Search Appliance (17 years old!!) - Google Showtimes - Google Code - Picasa - Orkut - Postini That's not even close to the full list of things that were more than 10 years old when Google shut them down. I left a bunch off for brevity's sake - but browsing https://killedbygoogle.com https://killedbygoogle.com is a really eye-opening experience. They really have shut down a lot of stuff - and if you loosen the requirement to ">= 7 years" the list gets very, very long. Again - I understand what you're trying to say. But it's just not simply a "zero effort joke". Google has killed a lot of things, and a lot of the things they killed were well used, long lived, and popular. They'll keep Google DNS running as long as it provides business value to them, and that's it. (Edit: I'm bad at list formatting, sorry)
willcipriano 6y ago
Not only that, I have a TV that is in working order that's 30 some years old. The average lifespan of a fortune 500 company is half that.
Ekaros 6y ago
This makes whole anti-trust angle actually even more interesting. If Google or Alphabet were to be split up, who would own the DNS? And would they still have business case to run probably relatively expensive service? Or would someone calculate that it makes more sense just to shut it down. Or maybe point all queries to nice marketing website?

xyst 6y ago

https://killedbygoogle.com/ https://killedbygoogle.com/ Per this site that tracks dead google projects, thus far they are at 220.

beisner 6y ago

There are two classes of Google products: ones that are small user applications, and ones that are core infrastructure internally and externally. As far as I know, only the former have a reputation for being EOLed. DNS is the latter. Google’s RSS reader was the former.

willis936 6y ago
The future is uncertain. Google has a history of canceling services and gives no signs of changing their behavior. Even if they made public acknowledgments hand waving “oh it’s these services not those other ones”, why would I fee any better? Google needs to spend a lot of time building trust. They don’t have it.
- beisner 6y ago
  Any service they have Enterprise contracts for they are extremely unlikely to shut down.
  - willis936 6y ago
    Is there any assurance? Why would anyone trust FAANGs?
- Spooky23 6y ago
  I have a coworker who is angry that Nissin Original Cup of Noodles eliminated the dried pea that was in the ramen. I think that happened a decade ago. Very tragic, but things change. The nerd rage over Google Reader, etc is similar.
coddle-hark 6y ago
Just a few months ago there was a leaked email from Google execs talking about how Google Cloud needed to start making more money or it would be shuttered within a few years. It’s pretty simple really. Google acts like a VC — place lots of bets on new projects in the hope that they’ll blow up and either a) start making adwords-scale profits or b) markedly increase adwords profits. Projects that don’t do either of those things are killed. The question is: Does 8.8.8.8 markedly increase adwords profit?

jsnell 6y ago

Because you made a zero effort joke that has been worn to the absolute bone by people repeating it thousands of times per year in HN comments, rather than at least putting in a bit of thought as to what the risk is for this service. Here's a quick attempt: Track record: 8888 has been running for more than ten years. Popularity: It appears to be incredibly widely used; e.g. a research paper from 2013 claimed it was serving 7% of all end user DNS queries, and Wikipedia claims that in 2018 it answered a trillion DNS requests per day (i.e. 10M qps). Business value: It is true that there is no direct revenue here. But I'm pretty sure that the original reason for launching it was defensive. A lot of Google's networking projects have clearly been driven by trying to ensure that users can connect straight and reliable to Google's services with no interference from middleboxes, since every request lost to interference is also lost ad revenue. Crappy ISP DNS servers that serve spam pages instead of NXDOMAIN are a pretty big vector here.

willis936 6y ago
It’s not a joke. It’s a question of trust and authority. “Google DNS has been running for 10 years” does not negate Google’s management behavior or change the inherent risk of a free running for-profit entity being considered a DNS authority. You calling it a tired joke doesn’t change these things.
acdha 6y ago
On the business value front, I’d also bet that they see value from the data visibility front since that gives them a chance to identify malware and phishing domains early and the terms of service appear to allow aggregate activity data mining. It’s not as precise as Google Analytics, of course, but it works on many things which don’t have JS beacons and I’d be surprised if they couldn’t find a good deal of useful information from that stream.
drewbug01 6y ago
> Track record: 8888 has been running for more than ten years. I understand the point you're trying to make here - but long-lived products are still shut down by Google, fairly often. Here's a list of some Google products that have been / were around for 10 years or more before being killed (or are slated to be killed soon): - Chrome Apps - Cloud Print - Fusion Tables - Youtube Video Annotations - Google Search Appliance (17 years old!!) - Google Showtimes - Google Code - Picasa - Orkut - Postini That's not even close to the full list of things that were more than 10 years old when Google shut them down. I left a bunch off for brevity's sake - but browsing https://killedbygoogle.com https://killedbygoogle.com is a really eye-opening experience. They really have shut down a lot of stuff - and if you loosen the requirement to ">= 7 years" the list gets very, very long. Again - I understand what you're trying to say. But it's just not simply a "zero effort joke". Google has killed a lot of things, and a lot of the things they killed were well used, long lived, and popular. They'll keep Google DNS running as long as it provides business value to them, and that's it. (Edit: I'm bad at list formatting, sorry)

willcipriano 6y ago

Not only that, I have a TV that is in working order that's 30 some years old. The average lifespan of a fortune 500 company is half that.

Ekaros 6y ago

This makes whole anti-trust angle actually even more interesting. If Google or Alphabet were to be split up, who would own the DNS? And would they still have business case to run probably relatively expensive service? Or would someone calculate that it makes more sense just to shut it down. Or maybe point all queries to nice marketing website?