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Every time a service like this appears (along with Fiber, Google DNS, Ajax Libs, Google Analytics, ..) I'm left feeling that traffic data produced as a side pro

Every time a service like this appears (along with Fiber, Google DNS, Ajax Libs, Google Analytics, ..) I'm left feeling that traffic data produced as a side product is somehow being reused internally. My wild (and least paranoid) guess is search quality: measuring site popularity using bandwidth as a proxy would be incredibly difficult for spammers to fake on a large scale, and when capturing logs for what increasingly appears to be the comprehensive majority of Internet traffic, we're talking really large scale. Given user reports and experiences of Google DNS, it seems at least its stated aim is barely satisfied in the general case: it is often slower than local ISP servers. Similarly, sticking a proxy between a user and their destination may add more latency than it could ever save, leading me to somewhat doubt the public reason these services exist.

Mahn 14y ago
> I'm left feeling that traffic data produced as a side product is somehow being reused internally Of course. One has to be very naive to believe data traveling to their servers is being immediately discarded. This reminds me of a story I saw once by Onavo, a mobile app which reduces data usage by acting as a middleman and compressing the data before it reaches the phone. The story however talked about which apps made the most revenue; and guess how they knew: http://techcrunch.com/2013/01/08/onavo-mobile-games-grossing/ http://techcrunch.com/2013/01/08/onavo-mobile-games-grossing... The company looked at game usage among their U.S. iPhone users in November. Then they looked at the market share, or the percentage of their U.S.-based iPhone owners that use these games on a monthly basis.
EricBurnett 14y ago
> Given user reports and experiences of Google DNS, it seems at least its stated aim is barely satisfied in the general case: it is often slower than local ISP servers. I don't think the claim is being made that it's better in all cases. As I understand it, Google DNS is (positioned as) a secure, ad-free resolver, and tries to be as fast as possible. In practice if there is a better resolver - say, run by your ISP - for you to use, you should use that. But often ISP resolvers fail in one dimension or another, in which case Google DNS is available as a viable alternative. Incidentally, to your question of what data is being collected: https://developers.google.com/speed/public-dns/privacy https://developers.google.com/speed/public-dns/privacy > Similarly, sticking a proxy between a user and their destination may add more latency than it could ever save, leading me to somewhat doubt the public reason these services exist. Again, in the general case that might be true. I wouldn't want to use a SPDY proxy on my desktop at home, for example, as it wouldn't be able to offer me any speedup. But it's already known that similar services can provide significant benefits on mobile - look at Opera Mini. Useful feature != beneficial for everyone.

Mahn 14y ago

> I'm left feeling that traffic data produced as a side product is somehow being reused internally Of course. One has to be very naive to believe data traveling to their servers is being immediately discarded. This reminds me of a story I saw once by Onavo, a mobile app which reduces data usage by acting as a middleman and compressing the data before it reaches the phone. The story however talked about which apps made the most revenue; and guess how they knew: http://techcrunch.com/2013/01/08/onavo-mobile-games-grossing/ http://techcrunch.com/2013/01/08/onavo-mobile-games-grossing... The company looked at game usage among their U.S. iPhone users in November. Then they looked at the market share, or the percentage of their U.S.-based iPhone owners that use these games on a monthly basis.

EricBurnett 14y ago

> Given user reports and experiences of Google DNS, it seems at least its stated aim is barely satisfied in the general case: it is often slower than local ISP servers. I don't think the claim is being made that it's better in all cases. As I understand it, Google DNS is (positioned as) a secure, ad-free resolver, and tries to be as fast as possible. In practice if there is a better resolver - say, run by your ISP - for you to use, you should use that. But often ISP resolvers fail in one dimension or another, in which case Google DNS is available as a viable alternative. Incidentally, to your question of what data is being collected: https://developers.google.com/speed/public-dns/privacy https://developers.google.com/speed/public-dns/privacy > Similarly, sticking a proxy between a user and their destination may add more latency than it could ever save, leading me to somewhat doubt the public reason these services exist. Again, in the general case that might be true. I wouldn't want to use a SPDY proxy on my desktop at home, for example, as it wouldn't be able to offer me any speedup. But it's already known that similar services can provide significant benefits on mobile - look at Opera Mini. Useful feature != beneficial for everyone.